


Requited

by kingess



Series: Requited [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety Disorder, Depression, Domestic Violence, Drinking, F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I swear it's not as depressing as it sounds, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Recreational Drug Use, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:28:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 77
Words: 232,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingess/pseuds/kingess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Café Musain isn’t open all night, but it’s hours are pretty damn close and it’s the late-night hours of the Musain that Courfeyrac loves the most. It is in these late-night hours that he and Bossuet  have argued over the finer points of Irish coffee, that Bahorel once got in that fist fight with that homophobic douche and wiped the floor with him, that Combeferre and Joly would try to explain to Enjolras why his body still needed sleep and food (despite his insistence that it didn’t). In the late-night hours, Musichetta invited Bossuet home with her and Joly for the first time and Feuilly allowed Courfeyrac to play his wingman as they flirted with the freshman and sophomore girls who came in for late night snacks.</p>
<p>And for the last month, the late-night hours are when Courfeyrac is most likely to see Flower Boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

 

The Café Musain isn’t open all night, but its hours are pretty damn close. While all the buildings on campus close down by nine except for the library (which is only open till midnight), the Musain is usually open till the two or three in the morning when it shuts down for a few hours and is open again by six to cater to the morning-people students.

But it’s the late-night hours of the Musain that Courfeyrac loves the most, and not just because of the fond memories he’s had here over the last four years. It is in these late-night hours that he and Bossuet  have argued over the finer points of Irish coffee, that Bahorel once got in that fist fight with that homophobic douche and wiped the floor with him, that Combeferre and Joly would try to explain to Enjolras why his body still needed sleep and food (despite his insistence that it didn’t). In the late-night hours, Musichetta invited Bossuet home with her and Joly for the first time and Feuilly allowed Courfeyrac to play his wingman as they flirted with the freshman and sophomore girls who came in for late night snacks.

And for the last month, the late-night hours are when Courfeyrac is most likely to see Flower Boy. The kid, probably a freshman or a sophomore himself, always takes a table-for-two by the window and sits there by himself. He always has a drink—Courfeyrac has spent more than a few hours wondering what he drinks, and he thinks Flower Boy looks like a mocha man—and a book or a notebook or his laptop. He is always dressed in garish clothes (skinny jeans and oversized sweaters and colors that would look better in a flower bed than on fabric) and he usually wears his long hair in a single braid. On the days when he smiles as he reads or writes, there are flowers tucked into his braid or behind his ear or through the button hole of a frumpy cardigan.

When he first saw Flower Boy, he thought he looked ridiculous. He thought the kid had lost a bet or something, because there was no way that anyone was ballsy enough to walk around this part of New York dressed like that. But every time he sees Flower Boy, Flower Boy is dressed exactly the same and he moves with a sort of effortless elegance that suggests he is perfectly at ease with himself.

And on nights when Enjolras comes on a little too strong and all Courfeyrac wants to do is go home and go to bed (because Enjolras always seems to forget that the rest of them are only human and their bodies can’t run off activist zeal the way his seems to), Courfeyrac passes the time by wondering what it would be like to go over and talk to Flower Boy. To flirt with him and charm him and lure him back to his place for what is bound to be some phenomenal sex. (After all, a man does not walk around dressed like that without having the confidence to perform well in the bedroom.)

It is a silly little fantasy and Courfeyrac promises himself that one day it will be _more_ than a fantasy, but Enjolras gets all huffy whenever he interrupts ABC meetings to try to flirt with someone. And Flower Boy deserves more than that.

Currently, Enjolras is running over some last-minute notes with the rest of the group about the rally for the on-campus housing issue that they’re trying to pull together while Courfeyrac and Combeferre work on some promotional material. But they’ve done all the work they can for the night and while Enjolras talks, Courfeyrac leans back in his chair and tries to spot Flower Boy in the crowd. He was here earlier, but Courfeyrac doesn’t see him at his usual table. He leans back even further, trying to see if he’s at the counter ordering a drink.

Combeferre leans close to him. “Your flower boy has already gone for the night,” he says. “He left almost an hour ago. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

Courfeyrac sinks back in his chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And he’s not _my_ anything.”

Combeferre laughs. “I’m not blind. I see the way you drool at him whenever Enjolras starts on one of his soap box speeches.”

“I don’t drool.”

“Metaphorical drool.”

“You said he left an hour ago?” Courfeyrac asks, giving up on the pretense that he doesn’t know what Combeferre is talking about. After all, Combeferre is one of his best friends and the man is as observant as hell.

Combeferre nods. “I’m sure you’ll see him again. He’s here almost every night.”

“I was kind of hoping he’d be here when we finished this all up,” he says, gesturing to the drafts of pamphlets and fliers on the table before them.

“Finally worked up the nerve to talk to him?”

“My nerve has nothing to do with it,” Courfeyrac says. “It’s Enjolras’s pushiness that’s gotten in the way.”

He grabs a stack of pamphlets and tries to shuffle them into some approximation of organization. They are currently trying to juggle two large issues—one on campus, and one on a local level—and both are starting to gain more attention, which means that they need to step up their A-game to get everything organized. Luckily, between Enjolras and Combeferre, they’re usually in pretty good shape, but things are starting to escalate quickly. Their attempts to change on-campus housing policies to make accommodations for trans students is starting to make waves with the administration. On the local level, they’ve been trying to bring attention to a series of attacks on prostitutes in the area. One of the girls has died already from the abuse she suffered and no one seems to be paying these women (and the one male victim) any attention. They’re just whores. They aren’t worthy people’s notice.

But, as usual, Enjolras stands as a voice for people who can’t speak for themselves. He wants people to take notice of these attacks and he wants the police to _do_ something to protect these people. For the last two weeks, most of Courfeyrac’s spare time has been spent looking up statistics (after four years of knowing Enjolras, he is _damn_ good at finding statistics) on the demographics of people who go into prostitution, trying to find an angle that will make people sympathize with them instead of sneering at them.

“Are you really trying to blame _Enjolras_ for the fact that you’ve been more content to stare than to flirt for a change?”

Courfeyrac straightens the edges of the pamphlets in his hands. “Fact: Enjolras is a cockblock. In fact, I might hack his LinkedIn account and add that as one of his qualifications.”

“He’ll know it was you. Just like he knew it was you who changed his profile picture to that sloth in the space suit.”

“In my defense, I was drunk when I did that.”

“I don’t think that mattered too much to him.”

“Sometimes the finer points of distinction are lost on him.” He holds the stack of pamphlets in the air. “Hey, Enj, we got these finished. What should I do with them?”

Enjolras looks up from where he’s working with Bahorel and Feuilly on a new on-campus housing proposal. “There’s a stack already in my laptop case,” he says, nodding towards the case at the head of the table. “Just add it to those.”

Courfeyrac leans across the table and pulls the case toward him. Save the single slot reserved for his laptop, every free space is crammed with neatly organized stacks of paper. Courfeyrac shuffles the papers around to make room for the pamphlets and he wonders how on earth Enjolras can possibly keep track of all of it, because it’s absolutely nuts.

He lingers for a few minutes, enjoying the company of his friends, before he gets up to leave. He has a paper due tomorrow afternoon and while he’s already done most of the work for it, he still needs to actually _write_ the thing. He sighs a little, because this is the problem with wanting to go to law school after he graduates—he actually has to do well in his classes during his senior year instead of sloughing it off and spending all his spare time with his friends (which, frankly, is the far more enjoyable option). He says his goodbyes and he heads out.

Courfeyrac is half-way down the block when he hears someone call his name. He turns around to see Marius hurrying after him and he smiles. Marius can be a little flighty—he talks about the mysterious blonde girl on campus far more than Courfeyrac ever thinks about Flower Boy—but his heart is in the right place and he does have a sharp mind at the end of the day. He’s a little naïve and Courfeyrac probably takes more pleasure than he should in making the younger man blush, but he and Marius have been good and loyal friends since high school. He stops at the corner and waits for Marius to catch up.

“What can I do you for?” he asks.

“I’ve got a bit of a question. There’s this girl I know, and she’s in a bit of a legal predicament.”

“You’re pre-law as much as I am,” he points out.

“Yeah, I know. But you’re a year ahead of me and her situation is beyond my grasp.”

“Is she in any sort of trouble? Because the state will employ a lawyer on her behalf if she can’t afford one.”

“She’s in trouble, but not that kind of trouble,” Marius says. “It’s not like criminal trouble. She’s trying to get custody of her younger siblings because her parents are _awful_ and she’s in a bit over her head.”

Courfeyrac shoves his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know how much I can help,” he says. “I mean yeah, I took that seminar on family law last year, but that’s probably not enough to give her the kind of help she needs. Enjolras would probably be a better help than me anyway.”

“Yeah, well, Enjolras is intimidating and she really just needs to know if what she’s after is even possible. She’s a friend, Courf.”

Courfeyrac smirks. “A lady friend, eh? Trying to help so you can get laid?”

Even in the dim light, he can see the way Marius blushes. “It’s not like that. Her apartment’s next to mine, okay? And I kind of already told her you could help.”

“Set up a time for us to meet with her, okay?” Courfeyrac says. Because this girl is a friend of Marius’s, he’ll help. Actually, he probably would have ended up helping even if Marius only knew the girl in passing. He genuinely likes people and he genuinely likes helping them (and on top of that, he learned years ago that the best way to promote social activism is by getting to know as many people as he can and showing them how the causes he believes in also shape their lives. He is damn good at it too.)

“So you’ll do it then?” Marius asks.

“Of course I’ll do it,” he says. “I’m not heartless. Tell her that I’m not sure what good I can do, but I’ll offer her what advice I can, okay?” He checks the time on his phone. It’s going on three. If he plans to sleep at all tonight, he needs to get home and get that paper finished up. “I’ve gotta run, but text me when you get things sorted out with this girl, yeah?”

Marius smiles at him. “Thanks so much for this.”

“Yeah, yeah, you can thank me later.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein we meet Jehan...and his boyfriend.

The bike ride between the Musain and Jehan's apartment takes about ten minutes (twenty if the traffic lights are bad) and when Jehan arrives home, it isn’t quite two. Technically, it’s his boyfriend’s apartment. It’s his name on the lease and Jehan doesn’t pay rent, not really. There are plenty of jokes about rent being paid in sexual favors and domestic services, but really Jehan is grateful that Mont takes care of the rent because it’s one less thing Jehan has to ask his father about. And the less he has to talk to his dad, the better off he is. Every request for money usually just turns into a shouting match—one which Jehan almost always loses. Mont invited him to move in over the summer when it became obvious that (1) Jehan wasn’t going to go home for the summer between his freshman and sophomore years and (2) Jehan’s father wasn’t going to fork out the money to pay for his housing if he wasn’t taking classes.

Despite the late hour, Jehan’s surprised to find his boyfriend of a year is already home. Montparnasse usually has business that kept him out late most nights. Still, Jehan smiles when he opens the door to find the lights on and his boyfriend sitting on the couch watching crappy crime dramas.

“Where’ve you been?” Mont asks. His voice isn’t demanding, per se, but there’s an edge to it that’s more than mere curiosity.

Jehan holds up his laptop case. “I was down at the Musain,” he says. “I was trying to finish up that paper on Romanticism that I have due on Friday.”

“You with anyone?”

He shakes his head and kicks off his shoes by the door and sets his laptop case down. “I can never work on papers when there’s someone else around.”

“You get the paper done then?”

“I want to do one more read-over before I turn it in, but yeah, it’s done.”

Mont laughs. “You’re the only person I’ve ever known to get papers done before the night before they’re due.”

Jehan smirks. “Maybe that’s why I’m in college and you’re not.”

“Low blow,” Mont says. He reaches over and grabs Jehan by the wrist and tugs him onto the couch beside him. He claims Jehan’s mouth in a kiss, somehow both rough and tender at the same time, which is exactly how Jehan likes it. He’s dated people who treat him like he’s made of glass, like he doesn’t understand that there’s a primal sort of love that leads to being ravished instead of just being made love to. Montparnasse has been the only to see that Jehan understands that distinction quite well and that he’s not going to break the minute he’s confronted with something that’s not soft and gentle and delicate.

Montparnasse sees the strength in him, and Jehan loves him for it.

When Mont pulls back, Jehan isn’t ready for the kiss to end and he lets his eyes wander suggestively to Mont’s crotch. “I can go lower, if you want,” he says.

“Tempting,” he says, “but we need to talk. I’ve been waiting for hours for you to come home.”

“You should have called,” Jehan says. He resituates himself on the couch so he can get a better look at Mont. “But what’s going on? Is something wrong?”

Jehan knows enough about the sort of business Mont deals in to know that something going wrong could be potentially disastrous—like twenty-five to life disastrous.

“It’s nothing like that,” he says, “but business has been slow and I’m going to need you to cover rent this month.”

“I…oh.” He’ll have to call his dad to ask for the money, which is going to be a pain since he called only two weeks ago to ask for some extra money to fix his laptop when it crashed. “When’s rent due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Oh.” He was hoping to have at least a week to talk things over with his dad (and maybe give his mom some time to soften him up). He bites his lips before continuing. “Are you…are you sure you don’t have enough to cover it? I mean, I have a couple hundred in savings that we can pull with whatever you have, and surely we could get enough that way.”

“Your dad has the money,” Mont says. “You can just call him up and he’ll wire it over to you.”

“It’s not as easy as that. You know things are between me and my dad. Asking for rent money is going to be almost _triple_ what he gives me for living expenses each month and I already had to ask him for more just a few weeks ago when my laptop died. I—”

“If you would just stand up to that asshole for a change, none of this would be an issue,” Mont snaps, getting to his feet. “Fuck, Jehan, you’ve been living here for over four months and I’ve never asked you to help with the rent. I think you can manage this one time.”

“It’s just going to be hard trying to get the money from him that fast,” Jehan says.

“It’s not like the man’s not loaded. He can spare two grand for you to pay rent, especially with the way he treats you! He owes you that money.”

“I know, but—”

“Didn’t he promise your mom that he’d cover your living expenses? This is a living expense! I don’t see what the big fucking deal is!”

“It’s a big deal because I can’t talk to that man without walking away feeling like _shit_.” Already he feels the anxiety stirring in his chest that makes him want to drink something or smoke something. Maybe in the morning he’ll call Grantaire. He always knows how to take the edge off.

“You need to stop letting that asshole shove you around.”

“I don’t _let_ him. He just does.”

“You’re nineteen years old and you know he’ll give you the money in the end. It’s time to get over your fucking daddy issues.”

“It’s not like I won’t do it,” Jehan says. “I’ll call him or whatever. I just don’t know if I can get him to transfer the money by tomorrow. It might take a few days.”

“We don’t have a few days, Jehan. Rent’s due tomorrow, and we were late last month too so it’s not like the landlord is going to go easy on us. We’re both going to be out on our asses if we can’t pay on time.”

“We were late with rent last month? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you were too busy hyperventilating about asking your dad for tuition money! I know you hate the man, but seriously, Jehan, it’s not like he can hurt you. And if you can’t man up and call him, then we’re both screwed.”

“Okay, okay,” Jehan says. “I’m sorry. It’s too late to call him now, but I’ll do it first thing in the morning, okay? I won’t get off the phone till he agrees to make the transfer before noon.”

He tucks his hands under his thighs because he can feel the way they’re shaking and he hates it.

“Thank you,” Mont says. Jehan can still hear the hint of aggression in his voice, but Mont always sounds more aggressive than the average person and at least now the worst of it seems to have passed. He sits back down on the couch and pulls Jehan in for another kiss. “I know this hard for you, baby,” he says when he pulls back. “But I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I didn’t think you were stronger than that douche.”

Jehan nods but knows that he’s going to lay awake all night trying to summon the nerve he’ll need to call up his dad and the patience he’ll need to let all his dad’s homophobic slurs slide.

Mont smiles at him, the kind of smile that usually sends shivers of anticipation down Jehan’s spine. He gets to his feet and tugs Jehan off the couch. “C’mon, baby,” he says, swatting at Jehan’s ass. “Let’s go back to the bedroom and I’ll remind you why tomorrow’s phone call with Douche-Dad is going to be worth it.”

Jehan leads the way back to their shared bedroom and tries to undo the knot of anxiety in his chest. He lists reasons why he knows he can do this and at the top of the list is this: _Lucas Montparnasse knows I’m stronger than this._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be up on Friday, so stay tuned :)


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac meets Eponine and Grantaire

At a quarter past noon, Eponine is beginning to think this whole idea was a bust. She thinks it was stupid to ask Marius’s help. It was stupid to think that he’d be able to help at all, despite his insistence that his friends could help.

Because Marius and his friend are late, and if they’re not here soon, she’s going to have to bail on them. She keeps a part-time job waiting tables and if she’s not there on time, she’s sure her boss can find plenty of other desperate students who need a job to take her place. She had to rearrange her schedule just to have this meeting in the first place.

“They’ll be here,” Grantaire says from across the table. They’re at some little café near campus and Eponine’s not sure, but she thinks it’s the one that Jehan is so fond of. “You’re always going on about what a ‘nice boy’ Pontmercy is. He might be an oblivious idiot, but he’s not a tool. He’s not going to stand you up.”

“Right,” she says and she smiles a little because this was the very reason why she brought Grantaire along in the first place. They’ve been friends from childhood, growing up in the same dump of a neighborhood and there are no secrets between them. Grantaire knows her mind as well as he knows her heart and even without her saying, he knows her concerns and her worries. He’s with her now as one-part emotional support and one-part body guard (because even though it’s the middle of the day in a well-lit café, Grantaire has seen enough of the world to be uncomfortable with Eponine meeting some strange man without any sort of back up).

“It’ll work out,” he says.

And she knows him well enough to  know that he doesn’t quite believe his own words—he is the king of cynicism, after all—but he says that to reassure _her_ and he wants it to be true for her and that’s why she loves him.

His phone buzzes and she sees the flicker of concern cross his face as he hurriedly taps out a response.

“Is that Jehan?” she asks. She’s only known the poet for around a year, ever since he moved into the city to go to school, but he and Grantaire had gone to high school together—a magnet school for the arts where Grantaire had studied painting under a scholarship and Jehan had dabbled in writing (poetry) and music (flute). In the year that she’s known him, though, she quickly came to understand why Grantaire was so fond of him. There was something about the poet that was just _good_ , that attracted people to him.

If nothing else, she’ll always be grateful that Jehan and Grantaire are friends because Grantaire needs someone like that in his life.

“Yeah,” he says, putting the phone back on the table in front of him.

“How’s he doing?” she asks. She’d come home between classes and work yesterday to find Grantaire sitting with Jehan on the couch. Jehan had been hunched over and holding his phone to his ear and cradling his head in his hand and Grantaire had been sitting with him, largely for emotional support. When she saw the pair of them, she mouthed the words _his dad?_ to Grantaire, who nodded with a scowl on his face. She placed a kiss on the top of Jehan’s head before she changed and when she came home from work hours later, she didn’t question the fact that her and Grantaire’s apartment smelled like weed.

It’s a well-known fact that Jehan’s dad is an ass. He pays for Jehan’s expenses, but Jehan hasn’t gone home since he started college and Eponine knows that his phone calls with his dad usually end up with Jehan in tears.

That’s all she needs to know about the man to hate him.

“Better than he was yesterday,” Grantaire says. “A little unsettled still. His dad really reamed him about asking for money again.”

"Did Jehan say why he needed the money?”

“Apparently he and Parnasse are behind on rent,” he says.

She frowns a little, because she’s known Parnasse almost as long as she’s known Grantaire. He used to hold drug deals in the parking lot of her parents’ motel before he moved onto schemes and crimes that would make him more money. She even dated him once, for about a month after Grantaire had started at his new high school and she was left behind. (She thinks it probably would have gone on longer if he hadn’t gotten drunk that one time and hit her. She has a no-tolerance policy for hitting.) It concerned her when Jehan and Montparnasse got together last year, but they both seem to be happy.

Still, she worries. She’s something of a chronic worrier. She blames it on her parents, who never worry about anything.

“Are things okay between him and Parnasse?” she asks.

“As okay as they ever are,” Grantaire says. “I suppose they’re a little tight for money right now, but they’ll get through it. Jehan said that Parnasse is taking him out somewhere nice tonight, to make up for the fact that he had to call his dad.”

“I just worry about him.”

“You worry about everyone,” he says. “If you stopped worrying, you’d probably collapse. Sometimes I think it’s the only thing that holds you together.” He pauses. “But there’s nothing to worry about. Jehan is made of tougher stuff than people give him credit for.”

“He may be made of tougher stuff, but that hardly means he’s the toughest person out there,” she says. “And you and I both know that Parnasse isn’t exactly a model boyfriend.”

“So Montparnasse is a little rough around the edges,” Grantaire says. “Jehan’s never complained about it.”

“He broke your nose once,” Eponine points out.

“That’s because I had bought some weed off him and told him I’d pay up by the end of the week and couldn’t,” Grantaire says. “I’m lucky all I got was the broken nose.”

“Exactly. Do you really think that Jehan—or anyone, for that matter—should be dating someone like that?”

“Do you really think Jehan would stay in an abusive relationship?”

“People do stupid things when they’re in love.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes. “Would you feel better if I promise to keep an eye on him?”

“Yes,” she says.

Their conversation is brought to an end when Marius and his friend finally arrive. Eponine clenches her fists and tries to ignore the way her heart seems to skip a beat whenever she sees Marius. She _knows_ he’s not interested in her, but that doesn’t change the fact that she doesn’t think she’s ever met a guy—a straight guy, no less—who is just so damned kind to everyone.

To keep her mind off the love that will never be, she focuses on Marius’s friend. He said he was bringing a guy he knew on the pre-law track, and Eponine figured that meant some stuffy guy in a suit. But the guy walking in with Marius is anything but. He’s dressed casually in jeans and plaid button up. He has dark curls like Grantaire’s, though his look far better kept. And he’s smiling at everyone and everything like they’re all old friends that just haven’t been introduced yet.

On some people, the expression would look fake. On this guy, it’s nothing but genuine.

Marius smiles when he spots her and Grantaire and he leads his friend over to the table. “Eponine, Grantaire, this is my friend Courfeyrac.”

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Courfeyrac says, taking a seat at the table. “A friend of mine stopped me on campus and tried to talk my ear off about an up-coming protest. I really didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Anyway, Marius only told me a little of what’s going on, so why don’t you fill me in on everything.”

Eponine drags her hand through her hair and glances at Grantiare for a little emotional support. He gives her a thin smile and she opens her mouth to lay out all her family’s dirty secrets. She talks about her parents and their shady business practices—seriously, she doesn’t know why the IRS hasn’t busted them yet—and their facilitation of petty crime. She talks about what it was like growing up under their roof—being verbally abused one day and being showered with gifts the next, being expected to help her parents rob their customers blind, being ignored when she got old enough to do her own thing.

Every word feels a little like a betrayal, even though she renounced her parents _years_ ago, but when she starts talking about her younger siblings, she remembers why she’s doing this. She’s old enough to live on her own and take care of herself, but they aren’t. Azelma and Gavroche  are young enough to still be manipulated by her parents and old enough to be forced into petty crimes themselves.

She needs to get them out of that house.

While she recounts the entire, grizzly tale, Courfeyrac watches her and listens to her. His face shows sympathy, but not pity—which is what she thought she’d get from some happy-go-lucky rich kid. She shares with him her concerns about the up-coming custody battle and how she really doesn’t know who to ask about any of this because social services won’t return her calls and it’s not like she can afford an actual lawyer.

When she finishes speaking, Courfeyrac nods and asks a couple follow up questions. Once he’s got his answers, he leans back in his chair, draping one arm over the back of it. “So correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like the issue isn’t so much about whether or not your parents are going to lose custody but rather if you’re going to _get_ custody. Is that right?”

“Yes,” she says. “That’s it exactly. They’ve already got Gavroche in foster care right now because of a suspiciously broken arm. I don’t want my family split up.”

“Gotcha,” Courfeyrac says. “Luckily for you, the courts really do try to keep families together when they can. If there’s a relative who can take custody, they usually get precedence over other foster families. I think the biggest thing against you right now is the fact that you’re so young. You’re what, nineteen? Twenty?”

“I turn twenty-one in a few months.”

Courfeyrac nods. “Yeah, that’s really young, but if you can show that you’re the best fit for your siblings, you’ve got legs to stand on. Do you have an apartment here that could fit both of them?”

She nods. “I’ve been paying through the nose for a three bedroom apartment,” she says. “Grantaire’s been living with me to help cover rent.”

“But I can move out at a moment’s notice,” Grantaire says. “If it’s between me and her siblings, I’ll move out. That’s not an issue.”

“Good,” Courfeyrac says. “And is it in a good neighborhood?”

“It’s in my neighborhood,” Marius says.

“So we can check that off the list,” Courfeyrac says. “You already said you have a job. Would you be prepared to move if the court doesn’t think your place is a good fit?”

“In a heartbeat,” she says. “I’m willing to do anything for them.”

“Double good,” Courfeyrac says. “So what you really need to do now is build up case precedence. You know, like find custody battles where custody has been given to an older sibling and how those kids turned out. We need to be able to show that this has been done before, and that it’s in the best interest of your siblings.”

“I would have no idea where to even start with that.”

But Courfeyrac just smiles. “You’re lucky you know Pontmercy here. He and I know a guy—he’s practically a law prodigy, only a senior in his undergrad and he could probably already pass the bar exam—anyway, this is right up his alley and he’s got a mentor on campus who’s done quite a bit of work with family law. If you want, I can call him up now and see what he suggests?”

Eponine barely has time to say yes before he’s on his phone.

“Hey, Enj, I’ve got a favor to ask—no, this like a serious favor—I can be serious!”

Eponine sees Marius chuckling a little and she turns her attention to him. She jerks her head toward Courfeyrac. “Is he usually like this?”

“Yeah,” Marius says. “He’s got a reputation for being a bit of a screw off sometimes, but he’s got a good heart and he really does care about people.”

“Thanks for talking to him for me,” she says. She resists the urge to reach out and touch his arm. “I don’t know what I’d do without this kind of advice.”

Marius smiles and she knows better than to think that his smile means anything. Half the reason she’s so smitten with him is because he’s just so damned nice all the time to everyone. He smiles at all the girls the same way he smiles at her. “I’m happy to help.”

She glances across the table at Grantaire, who’s giving her this look as though wondering why she does this to herself. She (very discreetly) flips him off, which makes him smile.

A moment later, Courfeyrac is off the phone. He’s smiling, which Eponine takes to be a good sign. “So Enjolras said he’d ask Lamarque about this. It might take him a few days to get around to it, but it’s on his to-do list. And I can swear to you that Enjolras is obsessive about his to-do lists. Marius here can keep you up-to-date as to what we’re doing.”

Eponine nods. “Thank you so much for doing this,” she says. “I feel like I should pay you or something.”

“No worries,” Courfeyrac says. “I’m not really a real lawyer, so it might be illegal for me to accept money for legal advice just yet. There is a way you can help, though,” he adds. “Especially where Enjolras is concerned.”

Eponine gives him a look. “I’m not having sex with him to get him to go faster, if that’s what you’re after.”

Courfeyrac bursts out laughing and it takes him a few minutes to pull himself together. She and Grantaire exchange looks across the table.

“I'm sorry,” Courfeyrac says once he manages to stop laughing. “That’s honestly got to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. Enjolras is practically asexual,” he explains, still smiling to himself. “And I think the _one_ time he maybe got a boner—oh don’t blush, Pontmercy, there’s nothing wrong with the word boner—it was over a dude, not a chick. So no. Sexual favors aren’t even on the table. What I was going to say is that Enjolras heads up a sort of student activism group, and we’re always looking for more volunteers. If you’ve got the spare time—and we’ll help you even if you don’t, so no pressure—we would really appreciate the help. You can usually find us here at the Musain working most nights. So feel free to stop by and put in some hours. You can bring a friend. Make a date out of it. It’ll be fun.”

“Volunteer hours?” she asks. “That’s it.”

Courfeyrac smiles at her. It's not as reassuring as it should be. “Think of it as community service.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So basically the extent of my knowledge about family law and custody battles is what I've seen on TV and read on Wikipedia, so if any of my depictions/descriptions of legal matters make it sound like I'm talking utter crap, it's probably because I am. My apologies.
> 
> Next Time on Requited: Courferyac finally finds time to talk to Flower Boy. The chapter will be up on Tuesday :)


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Courfeyrac finally talks to Flower Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: some brief homophobic and transphobic language

It’s Monday. Courfeyrac hates Mondays. He hates that his professors think he has nothing better to do over the weekend than hours of reading and papers and surveys. He hates that Enjolras is _convinced_ that none of them ever have anything to do over the weekend than to help out him (which he does love doing, because he believes in Enjolras’s causes with a fervor he didn’t know he had, but that doesn’t negate the growing list of things he has to do). He hates that his upstairs neighbors did nothing but have really loud sex over the weekend. (Especially since Courfeyrac had absolutely no sex at all over the weekend.)

He’s standing in line at the Musain to pick his up order pumpkin spice latte because it’s finally October and because it’s Monday, which means he deserves a pumpkin spice latte. He’s texting Marius as he waits—it’s a long line because he’s apparently not the only one who feels he deserves a special coffee treat on a crappy Monday morning—and Marius is going on about the latest sighting of his Mysterious Blonde.

He wants to tell Marius that (1) he’s acting like a creepy stalker man and (2) it might be wiser to give up on the blonde and go after Eponine, who is clearly into him. But he’s never really seen Marius so infatuated with a girl, and he can’t find it in his heart to destroy Marius’s dreams.

**Marius:** i think i saw her on campus. She was walking to the social sciences building. i think i should follow her. maybe i “accidentally” can bump into her???

**Courferyac:** i think you should go to class

**Marius:** but what if i never see her again?

**Courfeyrac:** dude, you’ve seen her once a week for ages. i don’t think that’s gonna be a problem. go to class

“Excuse me, but is there a name that goes with this perfect ass? I want to know whose name to shout when I come all over you.”

Courfeyrac looks up from his phone, astonished that someone was actually skeevy enough to pull that line. He’s practically got a rolodex of bad pick-up lines that he can deliver in such a self-deprecating way that he looks funny and charming instead of a complete creep. But that line…no one should ever say anything like that. Ever.

He watches to see what the girl the creep was hitting on will do, prepared to step in if said creep won’t take _no_ for an answer.

To his surprise though, the girl who turns around isn’t a girl at all.

It’s Flower Boy.

Flower Boy looks at the man behind him with a mixture of astonishment and disgust. “Were you talking to me?” he asks. Courfeyrac is surprised at how even his voice sounds. “Because you’re not really my type.”

“What the fuck?” the creep asks. “What the hell is your problem?”

“I’m not the one who just verbally harassed a complete stranger. I think you’re the one with the problem. Next time you want to try to flirt with someone, might I suggest poetry? Keats is always a good choice.”

Courfeyrac smirks. Flower Boy’s got some spine.

“I thought you were a girl! Get a haircut, fag.”

Courfeyrac stiffens. He isn’t really surprised that someone made that mistake, what with long hair and the Pepto-Bismol pink sweater and the narrow hips and legs. But he still thinks the guy is crossing lines.

But still, Flower Boy smiles. “I don’t think girls would be that impressed with your pick up line either. I’m telling you, you’ll get a lot further with poetry.”

The creep shoves him and snaps, “Fucking tranny.”

And he’s officially crossed into unforgivable territory and Courfeyrac surges forward.

“I think you’ve said enough, pal,” he says, grabbing the guy by the arm and pulling him away from Flower Boy.

The creep rounds on him, but Courfeyrac stands his ground. He’s not the tallest guy around—and standing next to Bahorel makes him look like a teenager—but he’s still pretty solidly built. Flower Boy might look like someone you could push around, but Courfeyrac doesn’t.

Courfeyrac gives him a cold smile. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

The man pulls out of his grip and mutters something about queers and trannies as he leaves.

But he’s gone, and that’s what matters. He turns, hoping to use this chance to _finally_ introduce himself to Flower Boy, but the other man is already at the counter, picking up his drink. He smiles at the barista, leaves a tip in the jar, and leaves.

Courfeyrac swears to himself because he didn’t even have the chance to catch Flower Boy’s real name when the barista called it out.

* * *

     

“No, Enj. We can’t have the rally that day. Joly’s sitting the MCAT that day, remember?”

“He can come after the test. It won’t take him all day.”

Courfeyrac pinches the bridge of his nose while he walks across campus. He’s on the phone with Enjolras and he’s grateful that his friend can’t see his exasperation. He loves Enjolras, he really does, but Enjolras has a tendency to forget that they all have lives outside of his causes (which he supposes is a little understandable because for Enjolras, his causes _are_ his life) and it usually falls on Courfeyrac to set him straight, because he has a natural propensity to keep track of his friends and their lives because he _likes_ knowing what they’re all up to and he likes knowing when they’re going to need some extra friendship and support in light of school and tests and work.

“It’s not just Joly, though,” he says to Enjolras. “Bossuet and Chetta are going to be exhausted because we both know that Joly’s going to work himself into some sort of nervous fit and they’re going to be spending the entire week just trying to take care of him. And then we’ve got Combeferre, who promised to help Joly study for the MCAT because he’s already taken it—and Combeferre is doing that on _top_ of his research assistanceship and his internship at the hospital. That’s half of us who won’t be in any shape to participate in the rally.”

He hears Enjolras sigh. “What if we do it the day before the MCAT? We both know Joly will do better if he can take a day to relax before he takes the test.”

Courfeyrac agrees that Joly needs the rest, but he thinks it’d be better coming in the form of a lazy day spent at home with Musichetta and Bossuet catering to him. “Don’t you think it might be better for all of them to do it after the MCAT instead of before?”

“I get that they have things going on,” Enjolras says, “I do, but this is important too, and we’re working under a deadline, Courf.”

“Yes, it’s important, which is why we should do it on a day when everyone can give it their full attention and energy. I’m on the same side as you, Enj. What if we do it on the following Wednesday? It’ll be the middle of the week. Lots of people on campus.”

“That’s cutting it close, don’t you think? We need to have the housing petition in by Thursday.”

“I like to live on the edge,” Courfeyrac says. Across the quad on campus, Courfeyrac spots a familiar Pepto-Bismol sweater. Flower Boy. “Look, just think on it. I’ve gotta go, okay?”

“Courf—”

“We’ll talk later. Bye!”

He can hear Enjolras calling his name again as he hangs up. He shoves his phone in his pocket and rushes across the quad. He’s not going to pass up the opportunity to talk to Flower Boy (especially not when he defended him earlier in the day and has that good credit to stand on). Desperate to get his attention, he calls out the first thing that comes to mind. “Hey, Flower Boy!”

He winces because he knows how awful that sounds.

But Flower Boy stops and turns toward the sound of Courfeyrac’s voice. By the time he catches up, Courfeyrac can see the mildly amused look on his face.

“Hey there, Social Activist Boy,” Flower Boy says.

“Social—what?”

“Oh, I thought we were giving each other lame superhero names.”

Courfeyrac laughs. “And you went with Social Activist Boy?”

“It’s better than Flower Boy. It’s a rather obvious choice, don’t you think?”

“I’m not that quick on my feet,” he says. “But it got your attention, didn’t it?”

“I suppose it did.”

“Are you headed toward the humanities building? My next class is there.” (Which is a lie. He’s done with classes for the day, but he needs an excuse to walk with him without seeming like a creep.) “Do you mind if I walk with you?”

“Not at all.”

“I wanted to make sure that you were okay after that scene at the Musain. That guy was totally out of line.”

Flower Boy smiles at him. Courfeyrac loves the fact that his smiles come so easily. “I’m fine,” he says. “Thank you for asking. Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I’ve been harassed like that. It happens. It’s not something to get hung up on.”

Maybe Saint Flower Boy would be a better name. “Let me buy you a coffee sometime,” Courfeyrac says. “To make it up to you.”

Flower Boy adjusts the strap on the messenger bag slung over his shoulder and Courfeyrac notices the ink smudges on his fingers. “I’m flattered,” he says. “I really am, but you should know that I’m seeing someone.”

Courfeyrac’s step falters, but he quickly recovers. “Is he as good looking as I am?”

Flower Boy laughs again. “More so,” he says. “Although you do have a nicer smile.”

“Damn,” he says. “I don’t suppose the smile is nice enough for a platonic coffee together?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Double damn. I don’t suppose it’s nice enough for a little _ménage a trois_ —”

“Are you serious?” He looks more bemused than he does insulted.

Courfeyrac laughs. “Well, no, not really. I mean, unless you’re into that, then maybe a little. But no…mostly no.”

“You’re lucky your smile is so charming or I might have to sic my boyfriend on you.”

Flower Boy’s phone makes a chipper chirping noise and he pulls it out of his pocket. A silly little _I’m so in love_ grin creeps over his face while he reads his message.

“That your boyfriend?” Courfeyrac asks.

“The very same,” he says, quickly typing back a response.

Courferyrac knows that he needs to give Flower Boy some space. “Well, I’ll let you get back to him,” he says. “But it was good talking to you. Don’t be a stranger, Flower Boy.”

Again, Flower Boy smiles at him. This one is a little softer, as though it’s a silent apology for the unspoken rejection that’s being passed between them. “I’ll see you around, Social Activist Boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try to have the next chapter up on Friday, but I can't make an guarantees this time around because it's holiday time and I'm home for Thanksgiving and my family is rather demanding (in the best possible way) when it comes to spending time together :)


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac gets some information from Grantaire and Grantaire meets Enjolras.

 

On Wednesday, Grantaire allows Eponine to talk him into going to one of those activist meetings that Courfeyrac had told them about when they met on Friday. It doesn’t take much effort to convince him, to be honest, because it’s already ten at night and Grantaire knows all too well what sort of men prowl the streets in the dark, just waiting for a young women to prey on.

He won’t let that happen to Eponine. He won’t.

He grumbles the entire way there and he knows by the way she smiles that she knows that he doesn’t mean half of it. But this is standard fare for them.

They reach the café just as Jehan is leaving is and they practically run into each other in the door way. Jehan laughs when he sees that it’s them.

“Sussed out my secret hiding spot, have you?”

Jehan’s grinning widely and Grantaire feels relieved to see him so happy after seeing him so low last week.

“Very secret, this place is,” Grantaire says. “Took us ages to find it.”

“Are you on your way out?” Eponine asks. “We were coming in to help with that activist group that meets here.”

“With Social Activist Boy?”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Jehan says with a sly smile. “You guys have fun with that. I’ve got a horny boyfriend waiting for me at home.”

Eponine checks her watch. “It’s a bit early for him to be home, isn’t it?”

“He texted,” Jehan says. “Said that the others are handling whatever they’re doing tonight.” He says this with a wave of his hand and Grantaire knows that while Jehan is very much aware of how his boyfriend makes money, he insists on a very strict don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy about the ins and outs of what goes on. “But it means he has the night off and it’ll be nice to have him home for the evening for a change.”

“Meaning you two won’t be leaving the bedroom,” Grantaire says.

“There are plenty of other flat surfaces in our apartment, you know. We don’t have to stay in the bedroom.” Jehan laughs when Eponine rolls her eyes. “Anyway, I don’t want to keep him waiting. I’ll you see two around.”

“Have fun tonight,” Eponine says.

“Oh, I will.”

Grantaire laughs and calls out, “Kinky bastard!” as Jehan leaves.

Jehan waves and says, “You know you love me!”

Grantaire shakes his head as he holds the door to the café open to let Eponine in. He spots Courfeyrac across the room. He’s got an astonished look on his face, and Grantaire isn’t sure if it’s because he’s surprised that they actually came or if he heard their not-quite-appropriate-for-public conversation with Jehan.

Whatever. Courfeyrac’s astonishment has nothing to do with him and why he’s here, so he follows Eponine to the corner of the café where Courfeyrac and his friends have shoved a couple tables together to make room for everyone. People scoot closer together to make room enough for him and Eponine to pull up chairs as Courfeyrac introduces them simply as “Marius’s friends.”

To his surprise, Grantaire ends up sitting across from someone he knows.

“Hey, man,” Bahorel says. “Long time, no see.”

He reaches across the table for a fist-bump.

“You two know each other?” Courfeyrac asks.

“Dude, we’re in the drunk tank like all the time together,” Bahorel says. “It’s gotta be—what, a half dozen times?”

“At least,” Grantaire says. He’s long since lost count of the number of times he’s been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, but more often than not, Bahorel is behind bars with him—usually with a layer of skin scraped off his knuckles and bruises beginning to form where someone got a lucky hit against him.

“And you were there that one time, at The Corinthe,” Bahorel says.

Grantaire smiles. “When the bar got set on fire? Yeah. Good times.”

“Please do not encourage him,” someone from further down the table says.

He and Bahorel swap stories of drunk and debauched nights back and forth and Grantaire is in the middle of telling a story about how he got arrested after peeing on a cop car when he was drunk—which Eponine can verify as being a true story because she was the one who had to bail him out the next morning—when his voice suddenly dies in his throat when the two more members of this motely group arrive.

He’s vaguely aware that the one with brown hair and glasses nearly drops everything in his arms when he sees Eponine, but he can hardly pay attention to that man because of the one standing next to him. Because he’s seen this man before—usually on campus where the sound of his voice can gather crowds and rally people together.

In his head, he calls the man Apollo because he looks like a golden sun god—all blonde hair and perfection and light—and there have been times when he’s skipped classes and art workshops to linger at the back of the crowd and sketch Apollo because the man is _perfect_. He is a visual masterpiece with a voice that catches people like a gravitational force and pulls them in. Every time Grantaire has tried to sketch this man, he laments every time that his skill as an artist isn’t good enough to capture him just right, and if he could, he’d draw the sound of Apollo’s voice, because it moves him in ways that nothing else ever has.

Apollo and his companion somehow find room to squeeze around the table and it’s like the rest of them were waiting for him to show up and take charge, because all at once, things are happening and the conversation shifts immediately from drunken brawls to social equality.

It never occurred to him that Courfeyrac’s activist group would be the same one as Apollo’s, which is stupid because he doubts there are all that many people actually care enough to devote their time and energy to something like this. How many activist groups did he expect there to be on campus? He should have seen this coming,

Eponine puts her hand on his arm and leans in close. “Are you okay?” she whispers.

He jerks his head toward the blonde. “Apollo,” he says, knowing that she’ll know exactly what he means.

“Ah.”

He’s not sure what gets discussed for the first part of the meeting, because his brain keeps getting hung up on the stupidest of details. Like the pure blue color of Apollo’s eyes—it’s a deep color and entirely pure, not murked up with any other colors and he’s sure if he tries hard enough he could blend his paints into the perfect color to match. Like the way his voice seems to ring and echo, even though he’s just talking normally and seriously, Grantaire would listen to him read the fucking phonebook and would be content to do nothing else with his life. Like the fact that his name is _Enjolras_ and how he wants to say that name over and over again until feels natural coming from his mouth.

Half-way through the meeting—they’re talking something about a petition against a new on-campus housing code that he doesn’t even know how to make sense of—Bahorel pulls out a flask, spikes a cup of coffee with it and slips the coffee across the table at him and when Grantiare takes a sip, he can taste the whiskey in it.

And he relaxes.

Which is stupid and more than a little messed up because really, it shouldn’t take him a bit of booze to loosen up. Other people can relax just fine without it, but he needs it. He needs the alcohol to smooth away the sharp edges of his mind and make him feel like he can relax in his own skin. Because without it, he’s going to end up sitting here in a sober stupor unable to conquer even basic human interaction because he’s so hung up on some perfect man who doesn’t even know his name.

He gestures to Bahorel to slide the flask over too, and Bahorel obliges with a smile.

Grantaire ignores the familiar spiral of self-doubt and shame. It’s not like there’s enough whiskey in the flask to actually get him drunk and besides, now he can focus on what the rest of them are doing without staring into space like some kind of idiot.

He thinks Enjolras gives him a disapproving look when he takes the flask in hand, but he ignores it.

He grabs a couple of pamphlet prototypes from the table in front of him and he almost wants to puke because the art on them is so bad. Half-listening to Bahorel explain to Eponine the housing issue—something about trying to get reasonable accommodations made for transgender students on campus—he grabs a pamphlet and a pencil and does his best to tweak the design into something that will make people actually want to read it. As for right now, he thinks that someone is more likely to spit their gum out in it than read it.

“That looks really good,” Courfeyrac says after a few minutes, leaning across the table to get a better look at it.

It really doesn’t look that good, but it definitely looks better than it did. “I’m an art major,” he says by way of explanation.

“We should have you do all our design work,” he says. “Combeferre knows a guy who knows someone who’s been doing it for us so far, but as you can see, it’s total crap.”

“Crap actually looks better than this,” he says.

Courfeyrac laughs. “That it does.” He hesitates a moment, then asks, “Can I ask you something?”

“I’m sure you can.”

“This is going to sound really weird,” he says, “but do you know Flower Boy?”

Grantaire looks up from the pamphlet he was drawing on. “Flower Boy?”

“Yeah, I don’t actually know his name, but I saw you talking to him when you guys came in,” Courfeyrac says. “Long brown hair, pretty eyes. Usually has a flower tucked in his hair and dresses like he got in a fight with pastel watercolors and lost.”

“Do you mean Jehan?”

“Do you know someone else who fits that description?”

“No,” he says. “Jehan’s one of a kind.”

“It’s Jehan, then?”

There’s something almost desperate about the way he says Jehan’s name, like he’s been waiting his whole life to say that name.

“Jehan Prouvaire, yeah.”

“Prouvaire? Like multi-million dollar software tycoon Jacques Prouvaire?”       

Grantaire leans back in his chair and gives Courfeyrac a cold look. “Why do you ask?”

Courfeyrac holds up his hands, as if surrendering. “Just curiosity,” he says. “I just…I see him all the time here and I’ve run into him on campus once or twice. I just want to get to know him better, that’s all.”

“He’s seeing someone,” Grantaire says, mostly because he knows that if Montparnasse thought someone was trying to seduce Jehan away from him, that someone was liable to end up in a body bag.

“So I’ve heard,” Courfeyrac says. “And I respect that. But he seems like a cool guy. I wouldn’t mind getting to know him better, boyfriend or no.”

Grantaire studies Courfeyrac for a moment, as though by looking at him long enough he can discern what his real intentions are. He expects to see some sort of deviousness, some sort of darkness, but Courfeyrac is guileless. Jehan could use some guilelessness in his life. Hell, Jehan could use some more _friends_ in his life, because right now all he’s got is Grantaire and Eponine and Montparnasse and, at a stretch, Montparnasse’s friends, who Jehan doesn’t even like. And to be perfectly honest, the people at this table seem much more like people Jehan would seek out than people he would seek out himself.

 “If you want to get to know him,” he says after a minute, “do yourself a favor and don’t mention his dad to him. They don’t get on.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, and Courfeyrac?”

“Yeah?”

Grantaire leans across the table. “I swear if you hurt him in any way, I will gut you.”

Courfeyrac blinks in disbelief, but then smiles and nods. “Consider me warned.”

Grantaire goes back to doodling on the pamphlets and wondering if he’d be able to convince Courfeyrac to pay him in exchange for redesigning these pamphlets, but it’s a long shot because he has no idea what sort of funds these people are working with. Still, getting paid for art is always better than getting paid for waiting tables.

At the other end of the table Enjolras starts talking—his voice pulling attention back to him as always—and Grantaire listens.

“As for the attacks on the sex workers,” he says, “I think our next step should be trying to work with them directly. These attacks aren’t getting any sort of media attention and the police aren’t doing anything about it, really.”

Grantaire knows there’s been a little media coverage. He read about one of the attacks online, but he’s pretty sure he only found the article because he went looking for it. He knows someone who knows one of the women who’d been attacked and after he’d heard about it, he’d gone looking for information. The coverage of the attacks was sparse, but it did exist.

“That ass Javert actually told me that they as good as asked for it when Combeferre and I went down to the precinct to ask about the case,” Courfeyrac says.

“Exactly,” Enjolras says. “If anything’s going to be done about this, we need to remind the police and the media that these women and men are _victims_ —not just of these attacks, but of life. I think if we got them to sign a petition or something along those lines, we could bring more attention to what’s going.”

“We could try to get a few of them to tell their stories,” Musichetta says. “Put the videos up on youtube, talking about the circumstances that drove these women into sex work.”

“That’s a great idea,” Enjolras says. “Would you mind heading that up?”

Grantaire can’t stay silent anymore. “Uh, there’s a flaw in your plan, chief,” he says.

It feels like the room freezes around him, like no one has ever dared call out this blonde god before. But Grantaire has never been able to keep his mouth shut. It earned him black eyes and broken arms from his father. It earned him the record for most suspensions when he was in high school. If he sees a problem, he has to point it out.

And apparently, it’s not any different with Apollo.

“And what would that be?” his voice is polite, but it’s clear he doesn’t see what he’s doing wrong.

“You want these women to admit their victims of society. They’re not going to do that.”

“But they are victims,” he says. “Society has marginalized them and ignored their plight, not even bothering to give them any sort of protection. And now they’re being attacked and no one is speaking on their behalf. They deserve to be protected.”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says. “I’m not arguing against that. What I’m saying is I’ve known a hell of a lot of prostitutes, and you’re not going to get any of them to admit that they’re victims. For one, some of them legitimately chose that work. They aren’t all forced into it at gun point. And the ones who are? They might know that they’re being victimized in their hearts, but they’re not going to say it out loud. They’re too afraid. Not to mention, prostitution is still illegal, so good luck trying to get their names a petition.”

“Just because they’re afraid doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help.”

“If you want to help so damn bad, why don’t you try campaigning to legalize prostitution? It’s just as futile, but on the off-chance that you do succeed, once sex work is a legal profession they can get legal benefits. Did you ever think of that?”

“Legalize prostitution?” Enjolras repeats. “Why? So men like you can take advantage of women _legally_?”

“Men like me?”

“You said you’ve known a hell of a lot of prostitutes.”

“Yeah, not using the word _known_ in the biblical sense here.”

“So you hired them for a drunken cuddle?”

“You know what? I’m done with this,” he says, getting to his feet so abruptly that he knocks his chair to the ground. He can feel his stomach churning and his chest is tight like something’s sitting on it and he can’t breathe.

“R—” Eponine says, reaching out to take his hand.

He shakes his head. “I’ll see you at home.”

He leaves the Musain and doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy belated Thanksgiving to the Americans reading this. I hope your day will be filled with delicious leftovers and good Black Friday shopping.
> 
> The next chapter (wherein Courf manages to get his platonic coffee date with Jehan) will be up on Tuesday.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac finally manages to get that coffee date he wanted.

 

It’s a complete coincidence two days later that Courfeyrac is walking across campus to get to a class and he happens to notice a sign advertising a student poetry reading with Jehan Prouvaire listed as one of the participants. He debates for all of about half a second before he decides to skip class and attend the reading.

It has nothing to do with Jehan, he tells himself. His mother is always after him to be more cultured and what’s more cultured than poetry?

The reading takes place in some armpit of a lecture hall in the library that can’t have more than fifty or sixty seats in it total. From the way most of the other attendees have notebooks or laptops balanced on their knees, he supposes that some English class must require its students to attend these readings. Even with them in attendance, nearly half the seats are empty.

Courfeyrac takes a seat in the back, but from his vantage point he can see the back of Jehan’s head. It’s easy to spot. He’s the only one who would dare weave a ribbon into his braid. A professor with a tweed jacket and leather elbow patches starts off the reading and announces the order. Jehan will be going last—which he is grateful for because (1) it means that he’ll have three other poets to try to listen to in order to have an intelligent sounding conversation with Jehan afterwards and (2) it means that he’s less likely to forget what Jehan’s poems are about because they’ll be freshest on his mind. Because honestly, poetry isn’t really his thing and maybe it’s a little creepy that he’s attending the reading at all, but he meant what he told Grantaire the other night: he really does find Jehan interesting and he really would like to get to know him.

He honestly tries to pay attention to the first three poets, but he just can’t. All three of them talk with the same sort of vague airiness and when Courfeyrac can force himself to focus on their actual words, all he gets are vague metaphors about stars and air currents and who knows what else. By the time the third poet is finishing up, Courfeyrac is nodding off in his seat in the back.

But then Flower Boy—Jehan—steps up to the podium and he’s wide awake and ready to pay attention. Jehan smiles at the crowd and tucks a loose piece of hair behind his ear. He leans in close to the microphone and introduces himself.

“I’m going to change things up a little,” Jehan says. “Everyone’s done a really fantastic job, but I’ve been on a spoken word kick for almost a year now, so my poems just…sound different. I’ve performed down at the poetry club down on Fifth a couple times, but my professor told me I shouldn’t read those poems because they’re mostly swear words. So you guys are getting my ‘family friendly’ poems.”

The crowd titters a little and Courfeyrac knows that he’s not the only one who’s paying a little more attention right now. Jehan has an interesting way of speaking, a different sort of cadence to his voice that sounds more conversational than anything. Like he’s inviting the entire audience to sit down to coffee with him, like he’s already decided that he wants to be friends with each one of them.

And Courfeyrac, who’s secretly spent the last four years since he met Enjolras studying the way people talk and how effectively they can communicate, knows immediately that there’s a power in Jehan’s voice.

Jehan looks down at the stack of papers in front of him and then looks back up at the crowd. “On second thought, I don’t know how family friendly these actually are.”

The crowd chuckles again.

Jehan smiles again, then his expression shifts and when he speaks this, Courfeyrac hears his _poetry_ voice instead of his _normal_ voice. It’s not airy like the others. If anything, he’d say it’s more grounded.

“I know an artist,” he begins, “with scars on his arms. Imperfect lines on a perfect body and if you ask me about them, I can sing you the song behind each line. One: the song of his father’s fist against his face. Two: the song of finding his mother’s bloated body in the bathtub. Three: the song of running till the pain is just a memory. Four: the song of his survival.

“But if you ask him, he’ll only sing you one song—the song of his failure.”

Courfeyrac falls in love with the sound of Jehan’s voice and the story of pain and survival he weaves as he speaks. He knows how to balance humor with anguish and he’s walking a fine line between grief and hope and he does it perfectly. He paints a picture of pain and beauty with his words and all Courfeyrac can think is that this artist is _so_ lucky to have Jehan’s love—because it’s clear with every syllable that Jehan loves this artist.

With the next poem, Jehan changes paces and shifts into something humorous—a list poem that he calls “Ten Lessons Learned from Dating a Criminal,” and Courfeyrac has no idea how autobiographical this poem is, but it’s damn funny either way. He follows up with two more poems, each as poignant, each as moving as the first, and when he finishes up the last poem at ten till the hour, he gets the most enthusiastic applause out of any of the other poets.

The applause makes him blush. Literally blush. Courfeyrac has never seen anyone blush like that. Not even Marius.

The crowd disperses as people head out to their next classes and Jehan lingers behind to talk to the professor for a minute. And because he lingers, Courfeyrac hangs back near the door, hoping to catch Jehan on his way out. Just before the poet leaves with the professor, still in conversation with him, he spots Courfeyrac by the door and a moment later, he’s ended his conversation with the professor and joined Courfeyrac. He half expects to hear accusations of stalking, but instead Jehan’s smiling.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says. “Did you come for a class assignment?”

“I, uh, actually came because I saw your name on the poster,” he admits. “I normally don’t do things like this. Poetry’s not really my thing, but I was curious.”

Jehan laughs. “Was it Grantaire or Eponine who gave up my name?”

“Grantaire.”

“The dirty bastard,” he says, but his voice carries no malice in it at all.

“I’m glad he did, though,” Courfeyrac says. “My mom might die of shock if she heard me say this, but I actually really liked your poems.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“I understood them so much better than everyone else’s poems.”

“Yeah, well, it’s against my poetic ethics to use abstract metaphors so people think I’m actually smarter than I am. My classmates don’t always seem to agree.”

“Well, the lay poetry-reading-goer appreciates your ethics.”

“Thanks,” he says again. “It’s always nice to hear people appreciate my poetry.”

Courfeyrac glances around the near-empty auditorium. “So, did your boyfriend come to the reading?”

“What? Oh, well, no,” he says. “He works during the day—well, he works all the time, really—but I didn’t really expect him to come. Poetry’s not really his thing, either, but whenever I do a reading at one of the clubs, he always tries to make it.”

“I’m not judging or anything,” Courfeyrac says. “I was just curious. I wanted to know what sort of man has you so smitten that you won’t even give me the time of day.”

“Hey, now, that’s not fair,” he says, still smiling. “You’re the one who cornered me on my way to class.”

 “I hardly cornered you. I had a class in the same building.”

Jehan rolls his eyes. “You _said_ you had a class in the same building. As soon as my boyfriend texted me, you wandered off.”

“I was heartbroken,” Courfeyrac says, grinning. “I had to ditch class to nurse my bruised heart.”

“I hardly broke your heart. It was the first time you spoke to me!”

 Courfeyrac shakes his head. “Nope, my heart was broken. It still is, for that matter. You can make it up to me by getting coffee with me.”

“We’ve been over this before,” Jehan says.

“Platonic coffee,” he says. “Friendship coffee. I know you’re dating someone, and I respect that. Really. But why should that stop us from grabbing coffee together? You can explain poetry to me.”

Jehan hesitates, then says, “If we do this, I pay for my own drink.”

“I promised you one—”

“I’m paying for my own drink,” he says.

“All right, all right,” Courfeyrac says. “I was just trying to be chivalrous.”

“It’s chivalrous to let the guy with the boyfriend buy his own drink.”

They end up at the Musain together, even though the café is usually packed with students around this time of day. Courfeyrac waits for their drinks orders to be ready and Jehan nabs them a table in the corner of the café.

“My name’s Courfeyrac, by the way,” he says when he sits down and hands Jehan his drink. “I just realized that I never actually introduced myself.”

“It’s okay. I knew already.”

“You knew already?”

“I’ve known the whole time,” Jehan says. “I’m here almost every night and it’s not as though you and your friends are quiet.”

“You’ve really known my name this whole time?”

He nods somberly.

“Well, I look like an idiot,” he says.

“In your defense, I never had a crowd of people around me shouting my name whenever you were around.”

“Are we really that loud?”

“Your blonde friend—Enjolras, is that his name?—he’s rather in love with the sound of his own voice.”

“He’s not that bad, is he?”

“No, not really. I actually rather like listening to him. It’s part of why I come here so often. I like being around people who are so passionate about things—who love things.”

“I’m not sure love is the right word,” Courfeyrac says. “Passionate, definitely. But love, not so much. Enjolras isn’t really the romantic sort.”

“You really think so?” Jehan says thoughtfully. “I don’t think a man can talk like he does without being in love. Maybe he’s not in love with a person, no, but he loves the things he stands for. I think he loves his friends, too. Sometimes the way he looks at you all—it’s like you're all brothers-in-arms. I think he’d do anything for you.”

“Most people don’t notice that about him.”

“Most people don’t make a habit of watching people like I do.”

“You should come join us sometime,” Courfeyrac says. He already knows that his friends will love Jehan. “Come participate instead of just observing.”

“Oh, I don’t think I could.”

“Why not? We don’t bite. Well, Bahorel bit someone once, but he was drunk and in the middle of a fight, so we don’t talk about that.”

Jehan laughs. “It’s not that. It’s...I can’t just...I can’t really carry on conversations with people I don’t know.”

“You’re doing fine now.”

“It’s different when it’s one-on-one,” he says. “I can usually handle it then, but I’ll probably still spend the rest of the afternoon replaying this conversation in my head and cringing over all the things I did wrong.”

“You’re not doing anything wrong.”

“That’s not the way I’ll remember it,” he says. “But it’s fine. I’ve been like this forever. I just sort of...endure it. But I have limits—things I know I can’t do without needing to run to the nearest toilet to puke because I get so anxious—and going up to a group of complete strangers and asking to join their table is probably at the top of that list.”

“But we’re not strangers anymore,” Courfeyrac says. “You know me now.”

“So it’s you...and a table full of strangers.”

“Then come on a night when Eponine and Grantaire come. Then you’ll know three of us.”

“That’s supposing that Grantaire will be going back,” Jehan says.

Courfeyrac sits back in his chair. “You heard about his and Enjolras’s argument.”

“In vivid detail from Eponine,” he says.

“It’d be a shame if he didn’t come back,” Courfeyrac says. “I liked him.”

“That’s usually not the first response that people have when the meet him.”

“Well, yeah, he was a bit prickly,” he says. “And he might have threatened to disembowel me when I was trying to get your name from him, but I still liked him. Besides, I’ve never seen anyone call Enjolras out like that before, and it was kind of awesome.”

“Do you normally just let him make mistakes, then?” Jehan asks. “From what Eponine told me, Grantaire brought up a pretty valid point.”

“Oh, he did,” Courfeyrac says. “One hundred percent valid. But I’ve known Enj for four years now, and I can’t think of a time when someone called him out like _that_. Normally, I think we're all just so caught up in the fervor of it all, and it’s not till later that someone—usually Combeferre—realizes that we have a problem and he and Enjolras talk it over and sort it out and then we move on. But Grantaire...” He shakes his head. “He just laid it all out, and yeah, Enj reacted badly, but I think part of it is that he was just so taken off-guard.”

Jehan looks at him for a long moment before saying, “You really do like Grantaire, don’t you?”

“He’s a cool dude. If he decides to come back to one of the meetings, I’m not going to let anyone chase him off again.”

“If it makes you feel any better, he’s got a pretty good opinion of you too,” Jehan says. “He wouldn’t have told you my name otherwise. Did he really threaten to disembowel you?”

“He told me he’d gut me if I hurt you.”

Jehan laughs. “That sounds about right.”

“How long have you and Grantaire known each other?”

“We met in high school. He was a junior already when I started, but we’ve been friends since I was about fifteen.”

“Any chance I can convince to tell me embarrassing teenage Jehan stories?”

“Not a chance," he says. “I’ve got way too much blackmail on him at this point.”

Courfeyrac glances across the café again and sees a man—lager than Bahorel and far more intimidating because at least Bahorel _smiles_ —who's staring coldly at Jehan. It's more than mere coldness, more than having a bad day and happening to glare at a stranger. “Uh, Jehan,” he says. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but there’s a guy over there who looks like he wants to kill you.”

Jehan glances over his shoulder and when he turns back around, he's rolling his eyes. “Don’t worry. It’s just Gueulemer.”

“Don’t worry? Jehan, he looks like he wants to rip out your liver and eat it.”

“He might, actually. Want to do it, I mean. I don’t think he’d actually do it.”

“Is there a reason for this?”

“Gueulemer’s an old friend of my boyfriend,” Jehan says. “And he’s never liked me.”

Courfeyrac looks back at the other man and he has a hard time reconciling the fact that this man—who looks like he’s spent time in prison for murder—and Jehan—who would look at home in his grandmother’s garden—have any connection to each other at all. Mostly, it makes him desperate to meet Jehan’s boyfriend because he wants to see the connecting point between two such different men. “Why doesn’t he like you? Secret crush on your boyfriend?”

“More like not-so-secret homophobia.”

Courfeyrac frowns. “And yet he’s friends with your boyfriend, who I assume is gay?”

“Bi,” he says. “But yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. I mean, I heard him say once that Mont—my boyfriend—is somehow less gay because he doesn’t ‘take it up the ass’ but I mean, he still likes dick and that’s still pretty gay. It doesn’t really matter, I guess. He’s never going to warm up to me, but Mont doesn’t let him run his mouth when I'm around and it’s not as though I can’t hold my own against him when he does. Part of the reason he hates me is because I insulted his straight-ness the first time we met, and he’s never really forgiven me for that.”

“This sounds like a story I want to hear.”

He shakes his head. “No. I was young and emotionally distraught and what I said doesn’t bear repeating.”

“Does Grantaire know? Will he tell me?”

“He was there, but I doubt he remembers,” Jehan says. “This was like three years ago.”

Courfeyrac makes a note to ask Grantaire about it because he can’t quite imagine Jehan saying anything offesnsive to anyone, but at the same time he can. He takes a sip of his coffee. “So,” he says, “tell me about your boyfriend.”

Jehan gives him a suspicious look.

“I’m trying to get to know you,” he says. “And quite honestly, I’m intrigued how someone can be friends with a guy like that—” He nods towards Gueulemer. “—and date someone as nice as you.”

“Mont is...unconventional,” Jehan says. “And he sees me differently than most people do.”

“How do you mean?”

“People look at me, and they make certain assumptions right off the bat. Some of them assume I’m a girl, half of them assume that I’m trans. Almost everyone assumes that I’m weak or flighty or that I can’t take care of myself—and people treat me differently because of that. I’m not saying that that’s bad, necessarily, but Mont has never treated me differently. He sees strength when other people see...who knows what. He doesn’t act like he’s afraid I’m going break. He doesn’t beat around the bush because he’s worried about upsetting the sensitive poet. He is who he is—rough edges and all—and I am who I am, and neither of us feel the need to alter that around each other and it’s _nice_.”

Courfeyrac admits to himself that part of him had been hoping to hear that Jehan and his boyfriend were on the outs, hoping that things were going poorly between them and they'd break up soon and then he could make his move then. But it was clear from Jehan's voice that he was very much in love and very much intending to stay that way. “It sounds like you’ve got a good thing going with him. How long have you been dating?”

“About a year now,” he says. “Is there anyone in your life? That you’re interested in, I mean. Other than me. I—you’re not hitting on other men when you’re in a relationship, are you? Because that’s a real shitty thing to do and—”

Courfeyrac’s laughter cuts him off. “No, I’m not seeing anyone,” he says. “And no, there’s not really anyone else I’m interested in. I kind of like playing the field. I like being able to get to know other people.”

“Well, next time you get to know someone, we should double.”

“I’d like that,” he says even though it’s kind of a lie because what he’d _like_ is to kiss Jehan, but that’s not really an option right now.

His lie is rewarded with a smile so bright it lights up Jehan’s eyes and Courfeyrac knows he’ll keep those lies coming if he keeps getting that smile in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be up on Friday afternoon.
> 
> May your Tuesday be happy and not nearly as snowy as mine.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan and Montparnasse talk about his platonic coffee date

That night while Jehan is making dinner (mostly for himself, though he’ll set aside some for Mont, because he’s always hungry when he gets home—there’s just no telling when that’ll be) he’s surprised that when he thinks of his coffee with Courfeyrac his thoughts aren’t instantly drawn to the stupid things he said or the witty remarks he could have made. He doesn’t think about all the things he should have done or worry about what a bad impression he probably made.

Instead, he thinks about how Courfeyrac made him laugh, about how thoughtful (if a little stalkerish) it was for Courfeyrac to come to the reading, about how Courfeyrac is incredibly open with his thoughts and emotions and how _rare_ that is. He thinks about how it’s probably inevitable that he’ll wander over to Courfeyrac and his friends at the Musain now.

He thinks about how he hopes that Courfeyrac finds someone to love and love him in return.

He’s just taking the food off the stove when Mont comes home. Their apartment is small (small enough that Jehan knows his dad would freak out to know his only son—gay or not—is living in what he would consider ‘squalor’) and Jehan can see his boyfriend at the door from the kitchen. He fumbles with the lock on the door for a moment before he turns around and Jehan can see a small potted orchid cradled in his hand.

“I found this for you on the way home,” Mont says.

Jehan sets the skillet down on a hot pad and goes to relieve his boyfriend of the flower. It’s a small delicate bloom, but it looks like they’re Lady’s Slipper orchids, which are red and gold and stunning. “They’re beautiful,” he says. “What’s the occasion?”

Mont grabs at his waist and pulls him close to kiss him and Jehan does some quick work with his hands to make sure orchids don’t get crushed between them. When Mont pulls away, he says, “Who says I need an occasion to get you flowers?”

Jehan clears off some of the beer bottles that line the windowsill to make room for the flowers. “You don’t like flowers,” he says. If it were up to him, their apartment would be covered in flowers. Well, not covered, but they’d definitely have more than a pot of orchids and a bouquet of dried roses in their bedroom. And after he’s done with school, he wants to move out of the city (or at least to an apartment with a window box) so he can have a garden.

But Mont doesn’t care for flowers. He’ll tolerate them, for Jehan’s sake (the same way that Jehan tolerates the way Mont will “find” or “get” things for him, but never buy them for him), but he would never consent to have his home look like a botanical garden. It’d taken Jehan ages just to convince Mont to let him paint the walls after he moved in—and that was just to paint them a neutral tan color (with one wall blue for accent purposes) instead of the awful mustard color it had been.

So flowers—especially flowers from Mont—are a bit out of the ordinary. The last time Mont had gotten him flowers had been last year after he’d stumbled back to Jehan’s dorm room in the middle of the night, his shirt covered in blood. (It wasn’t his own blood, but Jehan wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse about the whole matter.) At any rate, having his boyfriend of three months show up at his door in the middle of the night covered in blood had scared the crap out of him, and Mont had bought him flowers the next day as a way of apologizing.

“I don’t like them, but you do,” Mont says. “And I can do something nice for my boyfriend if I want to.”

Jehan smiles. Things like this are usually out of character for Mont, which makes them all the more meaningful. “Well, I love them,” he says. He plans to show Mont just how much he loves them later, but he’s hungry and he doesn’t what his food to get cold. He takes Mont’s hand and pulls him toward the kitchen. “I made dinner,” he says. “Eat with me?”

Mont joins him at the table, and they share dinner together for the first time in far too long. Jehan knew what he was getting into when he and Mont got together. He knew being with Mont would mean sacrificing some of the things he traditionally associated with relationships—flowers and soft moments and shared meals. Mont’s lifestyle just doesn’t allow for it. He keeps odd hours and never has a stable schedule. More often than not, Jehan will fall asleep alone, only to have Mont crawl into bed half-way through the night. And on the nights when he does fall asleep in Mont’s arms, he wakes up alone. But he’s known from the beginning that this is what being with Mont would be like.

And he’s also known from the beginning that being with Mont is worth all that.

Still, it’s nice to sit at home with his boyfriend and laugh and smile and share food and have a small pot of flowers to stand witness to their love.

Mont stabs the last piece of chicken off Jehan’s plate with his fork. “Gueulemer told me that he saw you with some pretty-boy at that froofy little café you like,” he says.

His manner is off-handed, like he doesn’t really care what Jehan is going to say about this one way or another, but Jehan knows better.

“Just another student,” Jehan says. “He was at the poetry reading I had for class today and then we went to get coffee afterwards. It was no big thing.”

Knowing Gueulemer, he probably told Mont that Jehan and Courfeyrac had had their tongues down each other’s throats.

“So going out with another man is no big thing now, is it?”

“If by going out, you mean sitting at the same table with,” Jehan says. “It was just two guys getting coffee. I didn’t think you’d mind. I mean, hell, I’ve done more with Grantaire, and you’ve never minded that.”

“That’s because I know that Grantaire knows better than to fuck around with what’s mine.”

He doesn’t know whether he should be offended or flattered by the possessive language. “No one’s fucking around with anyone,” he says. “And even if you can’t trust a complete stranger not to try to flirt with me, you should be able to trust _me_ not to flirt with anyone else.”

That makes Mont pause, and Jehan hopes it’s enough to ease the tension he feels building between them. Because he doesn’t want tension. He wants a nice dinner with his boyfriend. He wants to go back to the bedroom and let Mont absolutely _ravish_ him. He wants to spend the rest of the night curled up on the couch with Mont while he does his homework and Mont watches bad TV dramas.

“So nothing’s going on with you and that boy from the café?”

“Nothing,” Jehan says. “We sat around and he talked about the student activist group he works with and I talked about how madly in love with you I am.”

“You're not seeing him again, are you?” Mont says.

“I can’t promise that I’ll never _see_ him again,” he says. “We run into each other on campus and at the Musain quite a bit. But if it bothers you, I'll avoid getting coffee with him.”

“I don’t like you spending time with other guys—especially when I'm not around.”

“Okay,” Jehan says, and really, it’s okay because if Mont is that bothered this, Jehan doesn’t want to give him any reason to doubt their relationship. But it does worry him that Mont seems to have these concerns at all. “Is everything okay? It's just that you don’t normally talk like this. You know I’d never cheat on you, right?”

Mont leans back in his chair and drags his hand through his hair. “I know I’m acting like a possessive fucker,” he says. “But I’d lose my shit if you left me for some pretty-ass boy who’ll drink fancy coffee with you.”

The delivery is so perfectly _Montparnasse_ that Jehan laughs. “Lose your shit, huh?”

“I’d Hulk out on you and rip off your pants or something.”

“Isn’t the Hulk supposed to rip off his own pants?”

Mont smirks at him.

Mont has always had a way with smirking that makes a normally innocuous expression like a smirk into something positively sinful.

Jehan feels a shiver of pleasure run down his spine.

“You know I’ve got a thing about ripping off your pants,” Mont says.

“I could always do with a reminder.”

Mont gets to his feet and tugs Jehan out of his chair. “If it’s a reminder you want,” he says, leaning in and whispering the words into Jehan’s ear, “it’s a reminder you’ll get.”

Mont pulls him into their bedroom to make good on his promises and Jehan loses himself in his lover’s touch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy weekend, everyone :) For those of you with finals looming nearer, good luck.
> 
> The next chapter will be up on Tuesday.
> 
> (Also, yesterday I discovered the "happy texting blog" aka textsfromenjolras on tumblr. I'm already 100 pages in. Someone please send help--I really don't know if my emotions can handle this anymore, but I just.can't.stop.)


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eponine and Enjolras have a little chat about Enjolras's behavior at the Musain

After the whole mess on Wednesday, Eponine really has no desire to be spending any time with Enjolras, even though they agreed to meet on campus to talk over some things regarding the custody battle for her siblings. Because no matter how hard she tries, she can’t come up with any excuse for the things Enjolras said—and even if she could, she’s not sure it would make up for how those words had affected Grantaire.

When she’d gotten home on Wednesday night, Grantaire had been still been out and when she woke up the next morning, he was passed out on the couch, reeking of alcohol and vomit. She checked to make sure he was still breathing and she had checked the underside of his wrists for new scars just for good measure. She’s known Grantaire long enough to know the difference between drinking-just-to-drink, which he does most days, and drinking-to-self-medicate, which was clearly what he’d been doing that night.

Seeing him like that made her heart ache and made her angry all at the same time because Grantaire had been doing _so well_ lately and all it took was a few ill-chosen words from some blonde idiot to set him spiraling again. Before she left for class that morning, she called the student health center and scheduled Grantaire an appointment with the therapist he used to see and used a sharpie to write down the time and day of the appointment on Grantaire’s arm so he wouldn’t forget.

So while Grantaire is hopefully talking things over with his therapist—Eponine really has no idea if he’ll actually go or not, but she hopes he does because Grantaire made some amazing progress last year with this therapist and she’d hate to see all that hard work undone because of this stupid _Apollo_ —she’s in the library with the man who started this whole mess.

Of course, he’s completely oblivious to the fact that she’s upset about anything at all. Books and manila files are spread between them, neutral topics to bridge the emotional tension between them, and Enjolras is explaining to her the ins and outs of some custody case from a few years back where custody was awarded to an older sibling.

“What’s even better,” he says, turning an open manila folder towards her so she can see a stack of case notes written in very technical legal-ese, “is that courts in California, Montana, and Texas have all used this case as precedent. The work done here is so influential that courts all over the country are citing it.”

“Is that so?” she says dryly.

If he notices the snideness in her tone, he doesn’t comment on it. He opens another file and starts explaining how this case will hurt her chances, even though he insists that they can still learn from it.

She’s hardly able to say a civil word to him as they talk, which she knows is stupid and childish. After all, this man is helping her—and helping her thoroughly, no less, which is far more than she ever dared to hope—and she is grateful for that. She’s endlessly grateful for that.

At the same time, though, she keeps seeing the hurt and anger that flashed in R’s eyes the night they argued. She knows exactly why Enjolras’s verbal jabs struck so hard. She knows about R’s past with prostitutes, and she knows it’s not anything like Enjolras was insinuating the other night. She also knows that Grantaire has more or less idolized Enjolras for more than a year now. In his darkest hours, when Eponine never knew if she’d come home to find Grantaire drunk or passed out on the couch or slumped in the bathroom with his wrists slashed open, Enjolras and his speeches on campus had been some sort of beacon of light for Grantaire, a lighthouse that promised better days.

Grantaire’s fascination (and dare she say obsession) for the man he calls Apollo is something of a mystery to her, because as long as she’s known Grantaire, he’s never believed in anything or anyone. He carries his skepticism and cynicism around like a shield, but there’s something about Enjolras that makes Grantaire believe in something, in someone, like he’s never believed in anything else. She doesn’t understand it, but she does respect it, because Enjolras’s speeches and passion and charisma reached Grantaire in a time when neither she nor Jehan could.

But that makes the whole mess worse, really. Enjolras has some sort of power over Grantaire. Eponine knows it’s not something anyone could ever define or explain, but the fact that Grantaire believes in Enjolras when he only has doubt for everyone else gives the blonde man an unhealthy amount of power over Grantaire. If he said that Grantaire was strong and beautiful and worthy of love, Grantaire would probably believe him, even though she and Jehan have been unsuccessfully trying to drill those very concepts into his head for _years_ now. But that’s not what Enjolras said the other night. He somehow managed to strike at Grantaire’s sensitive spots—his drinking problem, his history with sex workers—and he struck with alarming precision.

She knows it must sting to hear those words (words which she’s sure he’s heard before) from someone whose voice he trusts above all others.

After the fifth snippy remark in as many minutes, Enjolras sets aside the manila folder in his hands and looks at her. “Have I done something to upset you?” he asks.

Either he’s really that oblivious to emotional cues, which she thinks is doubtful, or it took him this long to get frustrated with her snippy comments. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Look, I’m just trying to help you out, okay? If I’ve said something or done something that’s offended you, just tell me. I’ll apologize and we can just move on.”

“This has nothing to do with me.”

“So why are you mad at me?”

“Because you acted like an ass on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?” he repeats, like he has no idea that someone could still be upset by something that happened days ago.

“Yes, Wednesday. You acted like an ass to Grantaire.”

“That’s what this is about?”

“Yes, that’s what this is about.”

“We got into a little debate and things turned heated. I don’t see what there is to be upset about.”

“You call that a little heated?” she asks. “You were the one who started slinging personal attacks at him.”

“No,” he says slowly. “I was trying to point out how foolish the idea of legalizing prostitution is.”

Eponine stares at him for a long moment because she can’t figure him out. She can’t tell if he’s just callous and cold and unconcerned or if he’s really just oblivious. “Oh, is that what you were doing? Because to the rest of us it looked like you were accusing him of being a drunken lecher. You don’t even know him and you just started making wild accusations about his character.”

Enjolras pauses, like he’s trying to think back over what he actually said the other night. “I suppose I did,” he says eventually. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing too.”

He sighs. “You’re right, and—not that I’m making excuses for my behavior, because I know I was in the wrong—in my defense, with the way he was talking, the conclusions I came to were perfectly logical.”

“If you’d bothered to talk to him for five minutes before accusing him of shacking up with prostitutes, you would have known that your conclusions aren’t logical at all.”

“What, does he have some sort of ‘I don’t sleep with sex workers’ club membership card on him?”

“No, but when you talk to him, it’s pretty obvious that he’s gay,” she says. “Like never-been-with-a-woman-ever gay.”

“He’s gay?”

He sounds so honestly perplexed by the fact that she decides to take pity on him and not laugh at him.

“Yes, he’s gay. So shacking up with hookers—”

“Sex worker,” he corrects

“—drunk or not, isn’t really on his list of Friday night activities.”

“You know, there’s a market for gay sex workers as well, so—”

“Okay, seriously, that’s not the point,” she says. “The point is that you made unfounded accusations about a man you literally had _just met_ and you didn’t even check yourself when it became obvious that he was bothered by what you were saying. That’s just rude.”

“I didn’t realize he was upset.”

“Him storming out of the café didn’t tip you off?”

“Look, for the sake of full disclosure, I’m going to be honest with you and say that I am laughably bad at reading emotional cues from other people.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” she says dryly.

“I had a rather emotionally stunted childhood," he says, “and if it weren’t for Combeferre’s family, I wouldn’t have had any sort of model of healthy emotional responses at all while I was growing up. So yeah, reading someone else’s emotional cues is not something that comes easily to me, and this isn’t the first time I shoved my foot in my mouth because of it. Believe it or not, I used to be worse at it than I am now.”

She raises an eyebrow at him and gives him the look she normally reserves for her brother when he does something ridiculous. “Is that even possible?”

“Ask Courfeyrac about it sometime,” he says flatly. “I’m pretty sure he has a blog dedicated to all the times I’ve accidentally made an ass out of myself because I wasn’t reading someone’s emotions properly.”

“Does he really?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” He pauses for a minute, then says, “Was Grantaire really upset by what I said? Because he was right about the petition and the whole interviewing for youtube thing, and I really did appreciate him speaking up about it.”

“You should tell him that yourself,” she says because she knows Grantaire would never believe it if he doesn’t hear it from Enjolras himself.

“If you can convince him to come to another meeting, I’ll be sure to remember,” he says.

She’s honestly not sure if she’d be able to convince Grantaire to stay away because she thinks that Grantaire would follow Enjolras to the ends of the earth even if Enjolras does nothing but verbally abuse him the whole time.

Hopefully, though, that won’t be the case. Enjolras, reserved as he is, does seem legitimately contrite and she supposes that’s the most she can ask for.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says. She grabs the file folder Enjolras had set down earlier and opens it up. “So can you explain the difference between sole legal and sole physical custody? I’m not sure I get it.”

He gives her a kind smile. “I’d be glad to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that these last two chapters have been kind of short. I don't really write with set chapter lengths, but the next chapter is considerably longer.
> 
> Thanks for all the comments and support. You guys rock :)
> 
> The next chapter will be up on Friday.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan makes some new friends

Between the rain beating against the window and the general commotion from the other customers in the Musain, Jehan can’t hear his phone buzzing. The only reason he knows his phone is going off at all is because he sees the screen light up from the corner of his eye. He sets aside his poetry notebook and grabs his phone.

An unknown number. He unlocks the screen on his phone to read the message.

**Unknown Number:** Come join us! If you want, I’ll even lie and say we have cookies.

He looks up from his phone and across the room. Courfeyrac is standing up at the table, looking over one of his friend’s shoulder as they discuss something together. Courfeyrac looks up at him and grins before turning his attention back to his friend. Grantaire and Eponine are at the other end of the table, and even though Courfeyrac is nowhere near either of them, he knows that someone had to give his phone number to him.

Jehan types out his reply.

**Jehan:** Tell Grantaire to stop giving out my personal information

He can hear Courfeyrac laugh from across the room.

**Unknown Number:** Don’t let your anger with him keep you from joining us

**Jehan:** Don’t you think that getting my number like that crosses the line into stalker territory?

**Unknown Number:** It’s only stalking if I get it from the internet. Which I didn’t

**Jehan:** You tried though, didn’t you?

**Unknown Number:** I did no such thing

Jehan sets his phone aside and turns back to his poetry. For a few minutes, he works undisturbed, but then he sees his phone flash at him again.

**Unknown Number:** Are you going to come join us, or do I need to send Bahorel to bring you over???

**Jehan:** Which one’s Bahorel?

A moment later, Courfeyrac responds with a hastily taken picture of a solidly built man who could probably give Gueulemer a run for his money in an arm wrestling match. Jehan has no doubt that Bahorel could easily man-handle him over to the table, but Bahorel is sitting with Grantaire and they’re laughing with each other.

Jehan flips open his poetry notebook and snaps a shot of one of the pages and sends it back to Courfeyrac along with a message.

**Jehan:** I’m afraid Bahorel will have to wait. I am a servant to my muse’s demands.

Almost as soon as he sets down his phone, he has a new message from Courfeyrac.

**Unknown Number:** Poetry! Will you recite it for me?

**Jehan:** Sorry. I only do private recitations for my boyfriend.

**Unknown Number:** Damn. I miss the sound of your dulcet tones.

Jehan’s emotions are caught between flattery and frustration. He doesn’t mind talking to Courfeyrac. He doesn’t even mind texting him. But his texts are edging towards flirtation, and that’s not territory that Jehan wants to dive into.

**Jehan:** I miss being able to write without my phone going off every thirty seconds.

He feels a little petty and childish, but when Courfeyrac doesn’t text him back, he takes a deep breath and turns back to his poetry.

Except he finds he can’t focus. The words in his notebook blur together and he keeps catching himself glancing over his shoulder where Grantaire and Eponine and Courfeyrac and his assorted friends are all sitting. If he tries hard, he can make out Eponine’s voice. She’s ranting about sexism in college with the only other girl at the table, and occasionally one of the other guys offers an opinion (always respectful, never degrading). Grantaire is talking to Enjolras and the one with glasses whose name Jehan doesn’t know, and he can tell from the look on Grantaire’s face that he’s playing devil’s advocate and loving every second of it.

Other than Courfeyrac, he doesn’t know anyone else at the table, but he likes watching them all. He thinks they’re like a flock of starlings. They’re all moving in tandem together, but little groups break off together and then reconnect with the larger group. If he watches long enough, he thinks he can spot the patterns in the way they all fit together: the jolly looking one with brown hair and the way he leans into the darker-skinned bald man—and the way they both lean towards the other girl at the table, as though all three of them are pieces of the same puzzle; Bahorel and the thin red-head and the way they pull in Eponine and Grantaire as though they’re all kindred spirits; the freckled one next to Courfeyrac who takes in everything with wide eyes and an open heart; the indescribable light from Enjolras that seems to attract people to him and the way he glances at the man with glasses on his right, as though looking for guidance and reassurance; Courfeyrac who seems to flit in and out of every sub-group, as though he’s happiest holding them all together.

He doesn’t want to admit it to himself, but he wants to join them. He wants to be a part of this group that has already welcomed Eponine and Grantaire into their arms. But to go over now, after he’s rebuffed Courfeyrac so harshly, would look foolish or something. Not to mention the very idea of approaching that group makes his palms sweat and his stomach feel queasy because somewhere during his childhood he missed the lesson everyone else got on approaching groups of friendly strangers.

He forces himself to look away and turn back to his poetry, which now seems cold and boring and lifeless.

He drafts lines and crosses out words that don’t fit, only to scrawl them back in a minute later. With every failed attempt at a new verse, he glances over his shoulder again, as though to make sure that they’re all still there and they’re all still happy. He likes to think that this group of friends is unbreakable, that they buoy each other up during the worst storms. He likes to think that Grantaire will find happiness with these people, because that’s what Grantaire deserves. Turning back to his poem, he debates with himself for several minutes if _orange_ and _sponge_ could be considered rhymes before deciding that he’s foolish for even _wanting_ them to rhyme.

When he looks back this time, he notices the subtle shift in Grantaire’s carriage. It’s not something that he thinks anyone else will notice, with maybe the exception of Eponine, though she’s distracted by the man with glasses next to her. It’s as though Grantaire has crossed some line from being devil’s advocate to something more defensive. And a defensive Grantaire won’t lead to anything good. Jehan gets to his feet and grabs the white asters out of the vase on his table, and he goes to join the others (trying valiantly to ignore the way his stomach churns at the idea of approaching them).

Jehan stops behind Grantaire and starts to weave the flowers into his curls. He can feel his friend relax a little under his ministrations.

“What are you doing to my hair, Jehan?” he asks.

He likes that Grantaire doesn’t have to ask to know it’s him. Jehan just thrusts a handful of flowers in front of his face.

Grantaire brushes his hand aside. “Really?”

The one Courfeyrac identified as Bahorel laughs. “He’s making you look pretty, Grantaire,” he says. His voice is loud and booming and Jehan likes him already. “Do me next.”

The redhead next to him laughs. “It’s going to take a lot more than a couple of flowers to make you look pretty.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eponine says. “With some flowers, maybe a little make-up—I’m sure we could doll him up. Chetta, what do you have in your purse?”

“We’re still talking about Bahorel, right?” Grantaire asks. “Because I’m not letting any of you near me with anything you find in Musichetta’s purse.”

Musichetta has already pulled her purse onto her lap and she and Eponine look through it. “Scared, Grantaire?” she asks, looking up and smirking at him.

Her features are of a delicate cast and it gives her a sort of ethereal look, but underneath that, Jehan sense steel—tried and tempered and true.

“You wish,” Grantaire says.

“Are you going to introduce us to your friend?” Enjolras asks.

It’s Courfeyrac who answers from the other end of the table. “That’s Jehan,” he says.

Courfeyrac and the man with glasses who sits next to Eponine exchange a look and Jehan suddenly catches himself worrying what exactly Courfeyrac has said told his friends about him.

Enjolras holds out his hand and Jehan shifts the flowers and his grip in Grantaire’s curls to one hand so he can reach out to shake Enjolras’s. “Call me Enjolras,” he says.

“Jehan Prouvaire,” he says in return.

They share an awkward nonverbal moment of _I think my dad has done business with your dad. Do I mention that? I don’t get along with my dad, so let’s just pretend none of this has happened_. Enjolras smiles at him and Jehan can see why Grantaire is so smitten. He certainly is beautiful.

“It’s a pleasure,” Enjolras says. “I’m sure we can make room for another chair if you want to sit down.”

“Oh, I’m fine here,” he says. And really, it’s better here. Sitting at the table would make him feel pressured to join in the bantering when he’d much rather acclimate slowly and just watch for the time being. He keeps Grantaire between him and the rest of the group, as though he is some sort of protective barrier.

Introductions are made around the table and once everyone has adjusted to his presence (and once Grantaire has stopped trying to bat his hands away from his hair and just lets him do his thing), Jehan relaxes. Enjolras and Grantaire go back to debating nihilism and Jehan wants to warn Enjolras that he’s been having this very same debate with Grantaire for nearly four years and it’s a lost cause.

“Your argument,” Grantaire says, “that nihilism is false because people have changed or influenced or whatevered the world before would be a bit stronger if people themselves could actually change. I’ve got twenty-one years of evidence to prove that they can’t.”

“Just because they won’t,” Enjolras says, “doesn’t mean they can’t.”

Eponine, Combeferre, and Bahorel are swapping embarrassing stories and Jehan smiles to himself because he notices that while Eponine keeps glancing at Marius at the opposite end of the table (as though she’s willing him to notice her and the way that she’s smiling and laughing and commanding the attention of other men), Combeferre can’t keep his eyes off her.

Courfeyrac, Marius, and Feuilly are talking about the new van that parks near the student center on campus and sells burritos and Joly is trying to point out how unsanitary those vans can be and why they should all really be more concerned with health code violations when it comes to the way their food is prepared. Musichetta absently scratches his back while she and Bossuet laugh and joke with each other.

Grantaire leans forward, pulling away from Jehan’s hands and pulling Jehan’s attention back to him. “You can’t act like nihilism is just some throw-away philosophy—”

“It was a natural reaction to the horrors of the early twentieth century, nothing more—”

“No—not even—no,” Grantaire says. “Modernism and postmodernism both grew up around nihilism and existentialism. To brush them off as a mere reaction to something else undermines all of that completely. Everything’s relative. You can’t claim that you’re doing all of activism crap for the greater good because there is no such thing as the greater good. Having any sort of good implies that there’s some sort inherent value in our experiences—”

“The value in our experience isn’t necessarily inherent,” Enjolras says. He’s smiling as though this is the most invigorating conversation he’s had in ages. “But we can create value for ourselves. We can assign meaning to our experiences and interpret them—”

“And that interpretation is relative, that’s what I’ve been saying this whole time.”

“Relative or not isn’t the issue,” Enjolras says. “The very fact that we can and do assign meaning and value to the things we’ve experienced means that we can do that to the world around us. We can look at things and situations and politics and label them good or bad according to our experiences, and once we have a structure around which to discuss things, we can start to change them.”

“You’re both missing the point,” Jehan says.

“Oh, here it comes,” Grantaire says. “I present to you the world according to a poet.”

Jehan can hear the cynical smile in Grantaire’s voice and he knows that his friend’s staunch cynicism has no bearing on how they feel about each other. “Whether or not the meaning we attribute to our lives isn’t important,” he says. “Because we do attribute meaning to things around us. We’re programmed to look for patterns, so of course we’re going to look for patterns in our own life. And yeah, Enjolras, that gives us tools and framework to talk about the world at large and how to fix the problems that face us, but even that’s not the point.”

“So what is?”

Jehan shrugs. “We look for patterns in our own life and when we see those same patterns play out in other people’s lives, we build connections. It doesn’t matter if those patterns are inherent in anything or just our own construction. Changing the world is great and all, but I don’t think it’s something you can do until you first build connections with other people. Finding solidarity with someone else, listening to someone speak or looking at a piece of artwork and feeling that moment of _me too, I feel that too_ , that’s where our strength comes from—and once we have those connections and that strength, that’s when the real work can be done.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that for years, Enj,” Courfeyrac says from across the table.

Jehan can feel his skin flush a little because he hadn’t realized that everyone else was listening to him.

“You have never said anything half so eloquent in your life,” Bahorel says.

“It doesn’t matter if it was _eloquent_ or not,” Courfeyrac says.

“No, no,” Feuilly says. “Jehan said everything much better than you ever have. That was much better than your rant last month about normative ethics.”

“Oh, come on. It wasn’t that bad!”

Bahorel and Feuilly grin at each other and then speak in unison in a clear mockery of Courfeyrac’s voice, “So really, guys, if you look at…uh…the thing, you know, in context of that other thing—Oh, and yeah, don’t forget about that one time, with the dogs—”

“Combeferre,” Courfeyrac whines, “they’re making fun of me.”

“They make a good point, Courf,” Combeferre says, smiling at the antics of his friends. “That wasn’t one of your better impromptu speeches.”

“ _Et tu,_ Ferre?”

“For the record,” Joly says, “I always enjoy your impromptu speeches.”

“At least Joly is still my friend,” Courfeyrac says. “He sees my soapbox speeches for what they’re worth.”

“Comedic relief?” Bahorel suggests.

“Something to break up the monotony of Enj’s _Pro Patria_ speeches?” Feuilly suggests.

“Hey,” Enjolras say defensively.

“No offense,” Feuilly says.

“How come he gets a ‘no offense’?” Courfeyrac asks.

“Because I like him more.”

“Hey!”

“Settle down, children,” Combeferre says in a weary tone that suggests he says this a lot.

The simple command is enough to get Courfeyrac and Feuilly to drop their bantering and once more the group collapses into smaller conversations about a variety of topics.

Later that night, as they all prepare to leave when the Musain shuts down for the night, Jehan finds himself loitering behind the rest with Enjolras.

“So,” Enjolras says, “Do you think you’ll be coming back? I really enjoyed hearing your perspective on things tonight.”

“Oh, I’ll be coming back,” he says. He hasn’t felt this relaxed and at ease in a group of relative strangers in, well, ever. “It’s strange,” he adds. “But this was almost like having friends.”

“I thought you were friends with Grantaire and Eponine,” Enjolras says. “And Courf.”

“Maybe friends was the wrong word,” he says. “Because you’re right. I have friends. I have very good friends, but I spend most of my time with my boyfriend and his friends, and I don’t necessarily…fit…with that crowd. But this…this felt like home to me. This felt like family.”

Enjolras smiles at him and claps him on the shoulder. “They’re my family too,” he says. “But I’d be happy to share them with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if that weird psuedo-philosophical debate at the end there felt a little flat. I haven't really had to talk about/write about existentialism and and nihilism and all those other -isms in a while, so I was mostly relying on my trusty BS-ing skills haha
> 
> Anyway, the next chapter should be up on Tuesday :) Thanks for reading


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I discovered I'm really bad at chapter summaries: ie Enjolras, Grantaire, Eponine, Gavroche, Montparnasse, and Jehan all wind up in the same apartment for an afternoon

It’s the weekend before November when Enjolras goes over to Eponine’s apartment (an apartment that she shares with Grantaire, which everyone conveniently forgot to tell him) to talk over some issues regarding the custody battle for her younger brother and sister. There’s a preliminary hearing at the end of November, after which an official court date will be set for the actual custody case. Knowing how slow family courts can be, Enjolras doesn’t expect it to be any earlier than the end of January.

But there’s still a lot of work to be done. When he starts pulling up the files on this laptop, Eponine’s jaw drops.

“This is all different from the stuff you showed me two weeks ago,” she says, leaning over to look at his laptop screen.

“Yeah, most of that was hard copies and I haven’t had the time to scan them into my computer yet.”

“And all of this is new?” she asks. She takes his laptop from him and scrolls through the file explorer. “You’ve found all of this in the last two weeks?”

“I haven’t had the time to read through all of these yet,” he says. “So I’m not sure how much of this will be relevant.”

“You really didn’t have to do all this,” she says.

“I promised you I’d help,” he says. “This is the same amount of work I’d do for anyone else.”

She looks at him for a moment as though she can’t quite believe her eyes. “You know, when Courfeyrac told me you didn’t sleep, I assumed he was exaggerating, but now…” She shakes her head and gets up off the couch. “Do you like coffee? I’m going to make you some coffee. R, do you want any?”

Grantaire is sitting across the room and sprawled on the floor with Eponine’s younger brother, Gavroche. They’ve both got Xbox controllers in their hands and playing some game that looks vaguely familiar to Enjolras. He thinks he may have seen Courfeyrac play it before, but he can’t be certain.

“Nah, I’m good,” he says.

“I’ll have some,” Gavroche says.

“You’re too young for coffee,” she says.

“Mom lets me have some.”

“She also gave me beer when I was thirteen,” Eponine calls from the kitchen. “She’s not exactly winning Mother of the Year, Gav.”

“Never hurts to ask,” Gavroche says then turns his attention back to the game he’s playing with Grantaire.

Part of the reason Enjolras wanted to meet with Eponine this weekend was because he knew her brother was staying with her for a few days. Gavroche just had his cast removed from his broken arm and social services are investigating with the Thenardier’s to see if it’s safe for him to go home or if he’ll have to go back into foster care. Eponine has opened her home to her brother without hesitation until social services make up their mind.

Enjolras wanted the opportunity to speak to Gavroche, hoping to glean a little more information about what life with the Thenardiers was really like—it’s been years since Eponine lived at home, after all—and to see how Gavroche feels about living with his sister.

While he waits for Eponine to return with coffee—sometimes he suspects that Combeferre might be right and his body really does need coffee the way most people need blood—he watches Grantaire and Gavroche play.

“What’s this game called?” he asks.

“Portal II,” Gavroche says. “We’re playing co-op.”

Enjolras supposes that means two player, but he really has no idea. “Courfeyrac spent two weeks our freshman year playing this game,” he says. He remembers the different colored portals and Courf’s insistence that the game made him think and wasn’t just escapism.

He watches the two of them work out a puzzle together, watches the way Grantaire coaches Gavroche through the problem without ever spelling out the answer, watches the way Grantaire’s expression seems to soften when he’s talking to Gavroche and the way he seems so relaxed that it’s easy to forget that normally he’s drunk and rude and cynical. He doesn’t think Grantaire would get on his nerves so much if he were more like this.

In the week and a half since Jehan first came to one of their meetings, he and Grantaire have shown up at every meeting, with Eponine coming when she doesn’t have to work evening shifts. Enjolras has grown fond of having Jehan around. His mind is quick and sharp in ways that you wouldn’t expect, judging from his appearance. He’s well-versed in a range of social issues and can always provide a well-thought opinion on whatever issue they’re discussing at the time. He’s usually quiet at the start of each meeting, like he’s not sure he’s still welcome, but once he relaxes and once someone brings up something he feels strongly about, he argues passionately.

Having Grantaire around has been...less pleasant. The man is sharp, there’s no doubt about it, and his mind works in ways that Enjolras can’t even fathom, which makes him incredibly valuable. He pokes holes in Enjolras’s logic and arguments with alarming ease and while it’s frustrating to know that his thought process isn’t infallible, it’s also fascinating to talk with him.

When he’s sober.

Which is rare.

Of the meetings he’s come to, he’s shown up drunk for four of them. For another two, he and Bahorel got drunk during the meeting (which effectively derailed everything), and during one of those times, they somehow managed to convince Marius, who is honestly the lightest lightweight on the planet, to have a beer and that had...well, that had been a disaster. They were lucky they hadn’t gotten kicked out.

And what was _worse_ about the whole situation was that half the time, drunk-Grantaire was just as sharp as sober-Grantaire. After having a few beers or whatever his poison of choice is, Grantaire is just as capable of picking apart Enjolras’s rhetoric as he is when he’s sober, only then he’s an insufferable ass about it. What could have been an engaging and invigorating conversation usually turns into a shouting match.

If Grantaire could be as relaxed (and as sober) at meetings as he is right now, Enjolras is sure they’d along just fine.

Eponine returns to the living room and presses a mug of coffee into his hand. She sits next to him on the couch. “So,” she says. “What do we need to do?”

Enjolras pulls his attention from Grantaire and Gavroche and the game and focuses back on his laptop and his files and the work that he needs to do. He pushes up his sleeves because he’s suddenly feeling rather flushed.

They spend the next two hours searching through case studies and Enjolras slowly pulls more details of life with the Thenardiers from Eponine and Gavroche. If he can get them talking—and it’s not hard at all to get Gavroche talking and the more he talks, the more Enjolras can’t help but feel that he and Courf would get along _great_ —then he can get them to forget that he’s there, and suddenly it’s just them sharing stories instead of confessions and Enjolras feels a little sick that Eponine grew up with these people and that Gavroche is _currently_ growing up with these people.

“You might have been too young to remember this, Gav,” Eponine says, “but there was that time that that Sons of Satan motorcycle gang came through—they were awful, worse than Mom and Dad ever were. They completely destroyed the rooms they were in and the things you could hear whenever you walked past their rooms—” She cuts herself off with a shudder.

It’s Grantaire who starts nodding instead of Gavroche. “That was seriously messed up. I slept with the dresser shoved in front of the door the whole week they were there.”

“I made Azelma and Gav sleep in my room,” Eponine says. “I don’t think I slept more than a few hours that entire week.”

“And your dad—do you remember the way he lost it when I was two days late for rent? When I went to school with a black eye that day, Jehan nearly had a fit. He thought I moved back in with my dad.”

“Wait,” Enjolras says, looking up from his laptop. He’s been scrolling through the case notes of a custody dispute a few years ago where custody was awarded to an older sibling, but he’s been more focused on the stories being passed back and forth around him. “Grantaire, did you live with the Thenardiers?”

Grantaire doesn’t take his eyes off the TV screen as he shoves a large cube through one of the portals. “Yeah, for about a year in high school,” he says. “I rented their cheapest room at the motel after my dad kicked me out when he found out I was gay.”

“Even before that he spent as much time at my place as he ever did at his own,” Eponine says.

“Would you be willing to testify about some of these things if it comes to that in court?” he asks.

“Of course.”

“Good,” Enjolras. “I don’t know if it’ll be necessary, but you can never have too many responsible adults giving testimonies during cases like this.”

“Well, if you’re looking for a responsible adult,” Grantaire says, with a self-deprecating smirk, “you might want to look elsewhere. I’m more of the drunk and disorderly kind of adult.”

“You’d really get your drunken habits in the way of this?” he asks. “Really?”

“We all know I’m not the most reliable person in the room.”

“You’d be a lot more reliable if you’d just stop drinking. You—”

“Okay, boys,” Eponine says, raising her voice to be heard over Enjolras, “I think we’ve had enough of that. If you’re going to bitch at each other, it’s not going to be in my apartment.”

“ _Our_ apartment,” Grantaire says.

“You forgo ownership rights when you start acting like an ass,” Eponine says.

“Since when has that been a rule?”

“Since today,” she says. “Now go back to your game. The _responsible_ adults have work to do.”

He flips her off, but he’s smiling when he does it and Eponine responds by sticking her tongue out at him. And as easy as that, whatever dispute they may have had with each other is gone and balance is restored.

Enjolras has absolutely no idea how she was able to smooth things over that quickly, because if he had accused Grantaire of acting like an ass (however accurately), it would have resulted in an explosive argument.

When someone knocks on the door, Eponine just hollers for them to come in without even asking to see who it is yet. The door swings open and when Jehan and another man step in, a cold draft follows them in. Both men are bundled in sweaters and jackets and Jehan has a floral print scarf wrapped around his neck.

Neither of them looks particularly happy.

“They cut off our heat,” Jehan says. “And our place is freezing. Do you mind if we crash here for a bit?”

Grantaire doesn’t even take his eyes off the TV screen. “Not at all. What’d they cut off your heat for?”

“Someone forgot to pay the utility bill,” the other man says. He shrugs out of a leather jacket while Jehan unwinds his scarf.

“Will you drop it, Mont?” he says.  

“If you had just remembered to ask dear old _daddy_ for the money, we wouldn’t be in this mess!” He pulls off another sweater.

“You told me to get the money for rent, which I did—you didn’t tell me that I was going to need an extra hundred to pay for the utilities. I thought you’d cover that!”

“I didn’t have the money for rent, so you just assumed that I had money for the gas bill? Fuck, Jehan, what’s wrong with you?”

He’s down to one sweater now, the rest of his clothes in a pile by the door, and he stalks towards the back hall that leads to the bedrooms. Jehan follows after him, still struggling to strip out of over-sized sweaters himself.

“A hundred bucks. You really didn’t have a hundred bucks to spare? You can make that much in an hour, Mont!”

“I told you I didn’t have the money!”

“Yeah, and you _didn’t_ tell me that I was in charge of utilities on top of rent!”

“I shouldn’t have had to tell you, Jehan. It should have been common sense! I’ve paid both rent and utilities every other month we’ve lived together!”

“You told me I didn’t have to worry about that!”

“It’s not like your dad—”

“Don’t bring him into this!” Jehan’s voice is desperate rather than angry.

“—doesn’t have the money. I can’t believe—”  

They’ve reached one of the bedrooms and Enjolras hears a door slam shut. He can still hear shouting through the thin walls, but the words are indistinguishable.

Eponine is staring back towards the bedrooms with a look of concern on her face, but Grantaire hasn’t taken his eyes off his video game.

Enjolras isn’t sure if he’s imagining it, but Grantaire looks worried.

“Is that Jehan’s boyfriend?” he asks. He’s heard about Jehan’s boyfriend, of course. The poet isn’t shy about discussing his relationship and he’s heard Courf moping about the fact that Jehan _has_ a boyfriend, but this is the first time he’s seen the man.

“The one and only Lucas Montparnasse,” Grantaire says. His voice is bitter and biting, but that’s how it normally is, so Enjolras isn’t sure if this is Grantaire being Grantaire or Grantaire reacting to Jehan and his boyfriend.

“I don’t like him,” Enjolras says. Maybe it’s unfair of him to make snap judgments, especially when the couple is clearly having a difficult moment, but he doesn’t like the way the other man spoke to Jehan.  

“He isn’t all bad,” Grantaire says. “Normally he and Jehan get on a lot better than this.”

Eponine doesn’t look as convinced. “Has he said anything to you?” she asks Grantaire.

“Should we be worried about them?” Enjolras asks.

“Jehan knows what he’s doing,” Grantaire says. “He said things have been a little off since money has been so tight, but that’s been more of an observation than a complaint. You don’t need to coddle him, Ep.”

“I’m not coddling,” she says. “I’m just—”

“Worried,” Grantaire finishes for her. “Yeah, I know. But they’re so good for each other. You know that.”

“Things change, R—”

“Things like Jehan’s panic attacks have dropped dramatically since they started dating,” he says. “Things like he doesn’t get so anxious that he can’t keep down food anymore. Things like Parnasse doesn’t walk around like a complete psychopath on most days. They’re good for each other, Ponine.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“They’ve hit a rough patch,” Grantaire says. “It happens. All couples hit rough patches. But I know the signs as well as you do. We don’t need to be worried.”

Eponine doesn’t look convinced, but Enjolras is hung up on another detail.

“Does Jehan have some kind of anxiety disorder?” he asks.

Grantaire stares at him for a long moment, as though debating whether he’s to be trusted with this information before he answers. “Nothing that’s been diagnosed,” he says. “But he’s struggled with anxiety for as long as I’ve known him.”

He nods. “I just don’t want to accidentally cause problems for him during a protest or a rally or something. We’ve run into problems with Joly and his hypochondria in the past, and it’s better for everyone just to avoid situations like that to begin with.”

“You don’t have to worry about that with Jehan,” Grantaire says. “He knows his limits and he’s always been good at telling people when something’s too much for him. If you ask him to do something he knows he can’t handle, he’ll tell you. He might make himself sick with worry that you’ll be upset with him when he tells you, but he will tell you.”

“Good,” he says, because as important as his protests and rallies are to him, he’s not comfortable sacrificing his friends’ mental health for it. There are any number of ways to be involved and _not_ be put into an unbearable situation.

A moment later, the bedroom door opens. Montparnasse comes out and takes a seat on the sofa behind Grantaire and Gavroche. Jehan follows in a moment later and it’s obvious that he has splashed water on his face to rinse it off.

Gavroche doesn’t seem to notice, but Enjolras is certain that everyone else in the room knows that Jehan has been crying.

He’s less certain that they feel the same kind of anger towards Montparnasse as he does right now, because even though he’s barely known the poet for a handful of weeks it infuriates him that someone would treat his emotions so callously. Jehan is a rare soul who gives and expresses his emotions freely, and considering the emotionally-stunted environment Enjolras was raised in, he appreciates it. He needs it, almost.

Jehan lingers near the kitchen, like he’s unsure if he wants to join them in the living room or not. Enjolras scoots closer to Eponine, making room for Jehan on their sofa if he decides he doesn’t want to sit with his boyfriend.

After a moment, Jehan says, “Ep, do you mind if I raid your kitchen? We haven’t been able to use our oven or our stove all day and I’m starved.” His voice is bright, like it always is, but it sounds false.

“You’re always welcome to help yourself,” she says. “You know that.”

Jehan forces a smile. “Mont, do you want anything?”

Montparnasse doesn’t even look at him. “I’ll have some of whatever you’re having, babe.”

“All right,” Jehan says before disappearing into the kitchen.

Montparnasse is more focused on the video game. “Hey, Gav,” he says. “Give me the controller. Let me have a spin.”

“Wait your own turn,” Gav says. “We’re not even half-way through this level.”

“I’ll teach you how to pick locks.”

“Parnasse,” Eponine scolds.

“I already know how,” Gav says.

“Always knew you were a smart kid,” Grantaire says.

“What about hotwiring cars?” Montparnasse suggests.

“Seriously,” Eponine says, “we’re trying to keep my baby brother _out_ of a life of crime, Parnasse, not throw him into it head first.”

“I already know how to do that too,” Gavroche says.

Eponine looks angry enough to hit someone. “Who taught you how to hotwire a car?”

“That would be me,” Grantaire says sheepishly.

She grabs a throw pillow off the couch and lobs it at him. “What on earth possessed you to teach him that?”

“It’s a good skill to have.”

“Not when you’re ten!”

“I’m twelve,” Gavroche says.

“Not the point,” she says. “Fuck, no wonder you’re practically flunking out of school, if you’re using these two morons as role models. Why can’t you look up to someone like Enjolras?”

“Cause he looks like he’s got a stick up his ass,” Montparnasse mutters under his breath, which makes both Gavroche and Grantaire laugh.

“And on that note,” Enjolras says, standing up, “I’m just going to get some more coffee.”

He goes to the kitchen, looking for a break from that particular conversation more than anything else. He’s pretty sure that Courfeyrac knows how to hotwire cars, but it’s something he looked up online and only ever used that one time when he lost his keys. He doubts that Montparnasse—and hell, even Grantaire—use that particular skill for the same reason. He knows that Eponine and Grantaire both came from very different families than his own, but there’s a difference between knowing that and seeing it first-hand.

When he walks into the kitchen, he finds Jehan hunched over, his hands braced against the countertop.

“Jehan, are you okay?”

Jehan jerks away from the counter. “You scared me.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

He shakes his head. “It’s fine. It is. I was just trying to compose myself a little, you know?”

“I can go back out if you want some time—”

“No, no, stay,” Jehan says. “I’m fine, really. I shouldn’t be this rattled about all this. Mont’s right. We wouldn’t be in this mess if I had remembered to ask for money for utilities too.”

“It sounds like an honest mistake to me,” Enjolras says. He spots the coffee maker across the kitchen and goes to it to give himself something to do.

“Honest, but foolish,” Jehan says. “I probably would have forgotten even if I’d known I was supposed to get money for utilities. I had to ask my dad for the money, and I just get flustered whenever I talk to him.”

Enjolras cradles the cup of coffee in his hands and leans back against the counter. “Your dad is the head of that software company, isn’t he? Or is that a different Prouvaire?”

“No, that’s him.”

“Mine’s the CEO of Driftware Mobile. I think they’ve done business.”

“He’s done business with everyone,” Jehan says. He folds his arms across his chest. “It’s just hard, you know? Mont and...and even Grantaire, they don’t really get it. I mean, Mont’s dad left when he was just a kid and R’s dad...well, he’s just a monster, but my dad never abandoned me, he never hit me. So they don’t really get why I get so flustered around him, but I do. I just...Men like my dad and yours, they expect their sons to _be_ a certain way, and I could never be that for him. He was always disappointed in me. And I know, I’m an adult, and I should be over all this by now, but—”

“No, no,” Enjolras says. “I understand.” And he does. From the sound of it, his family and Jehan’s had definitely been more alike than his family and Eponine’s or Grantaires. There were differences, of course. It sounded like Jehan had tried to be the perfect son to get his dad’s approval. Enjolras had tried to be the perfect son just to get his dad’s attention. He’d been largely ignored by both his parents for most of his life and he knows that his interest in social activism started as a way to make his parents take notice of him.

He understands how a father’s attitude can shape an adult.

“You’ll come to terms with it when you’re ready,” he says, repeating back words that Combeferre has certainly said to him often enough. “And until then, there’s no shame in being flustered and there’s no shame in asking any of us for support when you need it. You’re part of a new family now, Jehan. Don’t ever be afraid to rely on us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that this story kind of has a slow build thing going on, but I promise this story isn't wandering aimlessly through the desert for forty years, okay? It's just loooong.
> 
> I hope you're all still enjoying it anyway. I love getting feedback from all of you :)
> 
> Anyway, the next chapter will be up on Friday :)


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which feelings are felt and parties are planned

The Les Amis d’ABC meeting ends early tonight, which doesn’t surprise Courfeyrac at all considering it’s the night before Halloween and most everyone (himself included) would rather be talking about Halloween plans instead of what’s actually on the agenda. They had managed to get some business done, which was good because business does need to get done, but now they’re just enjoying each other’s company, which is better.

He and Jehan sit together in the middle section of the tables they’ve shoved together for the meeting. (The staff at the Musain used to get annoyed with them for always shoving tables together like this, but Enjolras and Combeferre can be terrifyingly persuasive when they want to and they somehow managed to convince the staff to let them do whatever they want to the tables as long as they put them back before the end of the night.) For the last half hour, he and Jehan have been discussing the virtues and vices of horror movies versus suspense movies in an effort to reach a consensus on what qualifies as the best Halloween movie. He was surprised to find out that Jehan was something of a horror movie buff, having a particular soft spot for old school B-rated creature features. Couferyrac has always preferred suspense movies to horror because he doesn’t have much of a tolerance for blood and guts and gore. He likes things that make him tense and jumpy, something that will give him an excuse to cuddle up next to a significant someone (or to Combeferre or (a begrudging) Enjolras if he’s between significant someones), but he doesn’t want anything that’s going to give him nightmares.

“Let’s be honest, though,” he says to Jehan, “the pinnacle of Halloween movies is _Hocus Pocus_.”

Jehan laughs. “I haven’t seen that movie in _ages_.”

“That was the movie that taught me what a virgin was,” he says.

“I used to watch it every year on TV,” Jehan says, “and the last few years I’ve tried to find it on DVD, but I can’t. Not even on Amazon.”

Courfeyrac has learned by this point that Jehan has a particular distaste for Amazon, especially when it comes to Amazon as a bookseller. He’s still not certain about the ins and outs of it, but Jehan is under the impression that Amazon’s “schiesty business practices” undermine traditional publishing and brick and mortar bookstores. So admitting that he actually looked for something on Amazon is tantamount to Enjolras admitting that maybe ultra-conservative right-wing parties are right about a social rights issue. “I have an old VHS of it,” Courfeyrac says. “You should come over and watch it some time.”

Jehan treats him to his _I have a boyfriend_ look, which Courfeyrac has been getting with alarming frequency all week.

“I meant like having all of us over,” he says, correcting himself. “Like an after-meeting party. Oh, we could do it tonight—do you want to do it tonight?”

“I’m busy tonight,” Jehan says. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks a text message. “Mont is on his way to pick me up, actually. A band I like is playing at a nearby club, so we’re going to that. But you should still have your movie night. I’m sure everyone else would still have fun.”

Courfeyrac’s not blind. He can read the signals he’s getting from Jehan, though that doesn’t mean they’re not frustrating. Jehan has a boyfriend. Yes, he gets it, and he’s reminded of the fact virtually every time he opens his mouth to talk to Jehan. He knows that perhaps he’s more flirtatious than he should be, but that’s just how he talks to people. He flirts. Hell, he’s flirted with Bahorel before, and Bahorel’s just about the straightest man he knows.

“I’ll run it by everyone,” he says, even though he knows he won’t. He could probably talk a few of them into it, but it is a school night and he knows that at least half of his friends have early morning classes, and he’s pretty sure the other half probably have tests or papers coming up. In fact, now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure he has a midterm he needs to take before this weekend.

 Jehan’s phone chirps and he smiles down at the message. “Mont’s here. I’ve gotta get going.”

“What? He’s not coming in to get you?”

“He probably doesn’t want to find a parking spot for his motorcycle,” Jehan says, getting to his feet. He shrugs into his coat and wraps his scarf around his neck.

“He drives a motorcycle?” Courfeyrac asks. He can’t compete with a freaking motorcycle. “Be sure to wear a helmet. I’d hate to have anything happen to that pretty face of yours.”

Jehan rolls his eyes but smiles and grabs his bag from the floor. On another man, the bag would be a murse—not that Courfeyrac is going to judge a man by his handbag, but a murse is a murse—but Jehan seems to make it look dignified.

“Don’t be a stranger,” he calls after Jehan.

Jehan just waves at him.

Once he’s gone, Courfeyrac gets up so he can see through the window, trying to get a glimpse of Jehan’s boyfriend. (He refuses to think of the other man as _the competition_ because it’s not a competition. Jehan’s a grown man capable of making his own decisions. He’s not a prize to be won.) The man straddling the motorcycle outside takes off his helmet. It’s dark, but he can see enough to know that Jehan was right—the man is certainly attractive. Prettier than Courfeyrac is, though not necessarily better looking. Jehan accepts the helmet from him. They exchange a few words and he can tell from the way that Jehan’s shoulders shake that he’s laughing. Jehan leans down to kiss his boyfriend and climbs onto the bike behind him. He crams the helmet on his head, then wraps his arms around his boyfriend’s waist. He scoots in close and Courfeyrac turns away before he can see them ride off together.

When he goes back to the rest of his friends, he takes an empty seat next to Combeferre, who’s sitting off to himself a little ways, watching the way Eponine talks with Marius.

“You like her, don’t you?” Courfeyrac says. Were he in a slightly better mood (ie had he not just watched the man he likes kiss someone else and ride away on a freaking Harley), he would have teased Combeferre about this, because while Combeferre has certainly shown more interest in love and romance than Enjolras ever has, he’s old-fashioned and gentlemanly and him showing interest in anyone is a significant development.

“I think she’s pretty, yes,” Combeferre says, “and I think she’s smart and funny and interesting, but I’m not blind. I know she’s not interested in me.”

She laughs loudly at something Marius said. Knowing Marius, it was probably something stupid. Courfeyrac drags his hand through his hair. That was rude of him to think, he knows that. He and Marius have been friends for nearly ten years, and yes, he says stupid things (frequently, even), that’s no reason for Courfeyrac to be stupid and petty all because someone else is not interested in _him_.

_Snap out of it. You’re being ridiculous. So Jehan’s not into you. It’s not the end of the world._

“She’s interested in someone who’s _not_ interested in her,” Courfeyrac says. “And she’s got to know that. Marius prattles on about that blonde to everyone, so I’m sure she’s heard. The only reason you keep flirting with someone like that is because you know it’s safe. You know nothing’s going to happen. You know you’ll never be in a relationship with that person, which means it’ll never go wrong and you’ll never get your heartbroken.”

Combeferre turns to look at him. “What’s gotten into you?” he asks

He sighs. At the other end of the table, Enjolras and Grantaire are debating about something completely useless—not even philosophy or politics or anything. He can’t make out everything they’re saying, but he thinks they might be arguing about which fast food joint has better fries. He’s pretty sure Grantaire just likes to argue with Enjolras, just likes to wind him up and watch him lose composure.

He doesn’t miss the fact that Enjolras’s expression looks a little more alive, a little brighter, when he argues over something useless with Granatire.

“It’s nothing,” he says in answer to Combeferre’s question.

“Nothing that has to do with a certain poet who just left?”

Courfeyrac grabs a pencil off the table and chucks it at him.

“Of course not,” Combeferre says, smiling a little and tossing the pencil back at Courfeyrac. “You’d never let something like that get you upset.”

“I vote we change the subject,” he says.

“It’s okay to like someone that’s interested in someone else,” Combeferrre says. “It’s okay to recognize that you might be attracted to someone who’s already in a committed relationship.”

Courfeyrac leans forward and folds his arms against the table and rests his chin on his arms. “I still vote that we change the subject,” he says.

Combeferre ruffles his hair and as Courfeyrac swats his hand away, Eponine pulls a chair up next to Combeferre and sits down. She stares at Courfeyrac for a moment.

“What’s gotten into him?” she asks Combeferre.

Underneath the table, she gives Courfeyrac’s chair a swift kick and he makes a rude hand gesture at her.

“Long week,” Combeferre says.

“Well, I have a proposition that might make it a bit better,” she says, “so pay attention.”

 She glances down the table at Grantaire, who’s still arguing with Enjolras. The conversation has yet to go sour, though that’s probably only a matter of time. Though maybe not. Grantaire hasn’t been drinking much tonight, and that’s usually what gets Enjolras’s temper fired.

“Grantaire’s birthday is this weekend,” Eponine says, turning her attention back to them. “I’m throwing a bit of a party for him.”

Courfeyrac sits up straight. “A party?”

“It’s nothing big,” she says. “I’m inviting some friends and some people he knows from the art program. I think he’d like it if the lot of you came.”

_Translation? He’d like it if Enjolras came_ , though Courfeyrac’s not going to say that one out loud. At least not yet. Instead he grins. “I’m always game for a party,” he says.

“I didn’t realize that he liked us all that much,” Combeferre says.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she says. “He thinks you’re all nuts, but he likes you all the same. Anyway, the party’s this Saturday at my place. Marius knows where it is. Make sure everyone knows, okay?”

“Consider it done,” Courfeyrac says. A party. He can do a party. Especially since Jehan will probably be at that party, considering how close Grantaire and Jehan are. Of course, there’s a high probability that The Boyfriend will be there, too, but maybe Courfyerac will be able to let things go and move on from Jehan. Maybe if he sees The Boyfriend, sees in person how happy The Boyfriend makes Jehan, he’ll be able to let this go and move on to someone new.

“Is there anything you need help with for the party?” Combeferre asks.

Courfeyrac wonders how Eponine doesn’t notice the look in Combeferre’s eyes, because he’s pretty sure she could ask Combeferre for a pony right now and he’d do his best to get it for her.

“No, I think I have everything covered,” she says. “Just show up and keep Enjolras from saying anything stupid.”

“That’s harder than it sounds,” Courfeyrac says.

“We’ll talk to him,” Combeferre says, casting Courfeyrac a look. “We’ll make sure he’s on his best behavior.”

“Grantaire can consider it his birthday present from us,” Courfeyrac says.

Eponine lingers a bit to chat and Courfeyrac makes an excuse about needing to ask Joly about something to give Combeferre the chance to talk to Eponine alone. Combeferre still has a chance with her, even if she is hung up on Marius. It’s not like she and Marius are dating or like Marius is even interested. Combeferre can make his move, can sweep Eponine off her feet. He’s got far better odds with her at this point than Courfeyrac has with Jehan, and he tells himself that it’s not something he’s bitter about because he doesn’t want to be that stupid, useless, shallow person who gets overly frustrated by the hiccups in his love life—but when he’s honest with himself, he knows that’s exactly how things stand.

As the night wears on, slowly his friends drift away from the Musain in groups of two or three, and as the staff at the Musain start to clean up for the night, only Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre remain.  Enjolras gathers up fliers and pamphlets while Courfeyrac helps Combeferre try to organize the tables and chairs into something that looks like a reasonable layout.

“The administration is going to be voting on the housing issue in about two weeks,” Enjolras says. “We still need to get the word out about it.”

“I’ve been getting the word out about the rally we’re having right before the vote,” Courfeyrac says. This rally will be different than the last, which had involved speeches and aggressive pamphlet distribution. It was Bahorel’s idea for this next rally to be more low-key, more of a party than a political statement—a lure them in with food and music before hooking them with social justice kind of thing. “Grantaire and Jehan have been spreading the word about it too.”

“And I’ve already got everything cleared with administration and campus police,” Combeferre says. “We’ve got clearance to put up fliers and hand out pamphlets on campus, and they don’t mind us using the student center for the rally.”

Enjolras sighs and takes a seat at the table. He looks tired and Courfeyrac makes a mental note to check with Combeferre to see if Enjolras has been eating and sleeping properly lately. He trusts Combeferre to take care of their friend, but he still likes to be aware. Enjolras doesn’t relax and he doesn’t take breaks unless someone reminds him to.

“I guess I’m just worried about it,” Enjolras says. “Our rally to get signatures for the petition didn’t go well.”

“In our defense,” Courfeyrac says, “it was sleeting that day.”

He’s just as perturbed by the lack of success of that rally as Enjolras is, especially since he’d been the one to go through all the work of convincing Enjolras to change the date to accommodate Joly and the others. He knows he couldn’t have anticipated the freak fall sleet storm that rolled in the day of the rally, but he doesn’t like seeing his hard work (or anyone else’s, for that matter) going to waste.

“We’re getting the word out,” Combeferre says reasonably. “So the first rally was a bit of a bust. It slowed the work down, it didn’t stop it.”

“We can’t afford for it to slow down,” Enjolras says.

He’s driven by an urgency that would drive most people mad. Courfeyrac really doesn’t know he lives under the pressure that he sets up for himself. Enjolras really does need a break. He needs a release from this pressure before he gives himself a heart attack.

Combeferre sits down next to him at the table. “We can’t afford to rush it, either,” he says. “We need to take the time to educate people so they don’t think we’re forcing this on them—and I know, this isn’t something they should _have_ to be educated on, this should be common sense. But as things are now, people need to talk about this—and we’re making that happen, Enj. We’re opening dialogue, we’re starting conversations. And in the future, this won’t be a problem.”

“On the subject of the future,” Courfeyrac says, “we’re going to a party on Saturday, so get your party face ready.”

Enjolras raises an eyebrow at him. “My party face?”

He smirks. “Yeah, it’s the face you make when you finally pull the stick out of your butt.”

“What stick? And what party are we talking about?”

“It’s Grantaire’s birthday this weekend,” Combeferre says. “Eponine is throwing a party for him.”

“And you’re going?” Enjolras asks.

“We’re all going,” Courfeyrac says. “You included. On Saturday.” He plops down on a chair at the table and reaches for Enjolras’s laptop. He pulls up his Google calendar (which, of course, is booked solid). “I’m adding it to your schedule.”

“I’m busy on Saturday. I’ve got—”

“You’ve got a party to attend,” Courfeyrac says.

“Eponine says that she thinks Grantaire would want us to be there,” he says.

“Besides,” Courfeyrac says, clearing the event Enjolras had planned (event title: Study for Legal Ethics Midterm), and replacing it with the party, “you need to relax.”

“I’m perfectly relaxed,” Enjolras says.

Both Courfeyrac and Combeferre stare at him.

“What?” he says defensively. “I take plenty of time to relax. Combeferre makes sure of it.”

Courfeyrac rolls his eyes. “I mean _really_ relax,” he says. “Not sit on the couch and read Kant while you sip pretentious coffee.”

“I don’t even like Kant.”

“You know what I mean,” he says. “So you’re going to take a night off from whatever boring thing you have planned, and you’re going to go out with Ferre and the rest of our friends and me and you’re going to celebrate Grantaire’s birthday like a _normal_ human being for a change, got it?”

Enjolras takes his laptop back from Courfeyrac, as though worried the longer he leaves it with Courfeyrac the more he’ll wreak havoc with his precious schedule. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll go—but I think you’re both being ridiculous. I relax plenty.”

“Sure you do.” Courfeyrac smiles fondly at his friend. “Saturday night. Don’t be late.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a heads up: tomorrow I'm leaving for the Land of Unreliable Internet Connection for about a week and a half, so I might not be able to update as reliably. But please rest assured that I will do my best to get the next couple of chapters up on time (especially considering that I'm a particular fan of these next couple chapters--much tense, very drama)
> 
> As always, thanks for those of you who left kudos and comments. It always warms my heart :)
> 
> Next chapter (hopefully) will be up on Tuesday.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire's Birthday Party--Part the First

Despite Enjolras's promise to come, it still takes Courfeyrac a half hour to convince Enjolras that yes, he really does need to come to this party. Enjolras’s favorite excuse for the day is that he and Grantaire will just end up arguing—because when do they _not_ end up arguing?—and he’ll ruin Grantaire’s birthday that way, and really it’ll just be better for everyone if he stays at home and studies for an upcoming midterm. Luckily, Courfeyrac has Combeferre on his side and between the two of them, they manage to convince Enjolras to leave his apartment and cross town to the apartment that Eponine and Grantaire share.

Once they’re there, though, Courfeyrac begins to rethink their decision to drag Enjolras along, because he’s _certain_ that Enjolras has never been to a party quite like this before, and he’s not entirely certain that Enjolras is going to be able to keep his opinions to himself.

Because it took so long to coerce Enjolras out of the apartment, the party is already in full-swing by the time they show up and the music is loud and the air is a little thick with the smell of smoke and incense. Most of the guests seem to be lounging around and chatting with one another, though there’s a sizable group by the sound system having an impromptu dance party. He spots Eponine squished on the couch with Joly on one side and a blonde girl Courfeyrac doesn’t know on the other, and he can tell by the look on her face that Joly is hypochondriac-ing at her.

“Charming,” Enjolras says, when he steps in.

“Be nice,” Combeferre says.

Enjolras scans the apartment as though he doesn’t know what to make of it. “Grantaire’s over by the kitchen. We should go pay our respects.”

Courfeyrac rolls his eyes. “This is a birthday party, not a funeral, Enj. We’re not paying our respects.”

He cuts across the room to the kitchen, letting Combeferre and Enjolras follow him because he knows Combeferre will do a far better of explaining to Enjolras why it’s important not to say crap like that at a birthday party. Grantaire spots them as they approach and extracts himself from whatever conversation he’s having to say hello.

“Happy birthday, man,” Courfeyrac says, leaning in to clap Grantaire on the shoulder.

“Thanks for coming,” he says.

“It’s not a party without me,” he says, grinning a little. “It was the least I could do for your birthday.”

Combeferre and Enjolras finally catch up and they both extend to Grantaire their birthday wishes. It’s been a few days since any of them have seen Grantaire, so they spend a few minutes talking and catching up and Enjolras actually manages to sound civil despite the disapproving glances he gives at the bottle in Grantaire’s hand.

 “I don’t mean to sound like a stick in the mud,” Combeferre says, during a lull in the conversation, “but is that weed I smell?”

Grantaire’s face flushes a little at the disapproving look Enjolras gives him and he rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s why Ponine pulled out the incense. Some of the guys from my art classes brought some.”

“Do you know how much trouble you could get in if the police show up?” Enjolras says.

“Yeah, actually, I do,” Grantaire says. “Look, if it’s making you uncomfortable, I can tell them to stop.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Courfeyrac says. He knows that he’s been to more parties like this alone than Combeferre or Enjolras have together. He’s never been into drugs himself—his highs as a teenager came from extreme risk-taking rather than drugs—but he was friends with kids who were. He knows that as far as drug use is concerned, smoking weed is about as mild as it gets. “It’s your party. Hell, it’s not like we’re going to call the police on you.”

For a split second, he has the terrifying image of Enjolras actually calling the cops on their friends, but he pushes aside the thought because he knows Enjolras won’t. Not unless someone who is high or drunk is at risk of being hurt or assaulted, at which point Enjolras wouldn’t hesitate to call the police and step in—which is exactly what Courfeyrac would do in the same situation.

“Sorry,” Combeferre says. “I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. I just…I took a seminar are on the harms of recreational drugs and it’s made me kind of paranoid.”

Grantaire laughs, though Courfeyrac doesn’t miss the way he glances at Enjolras, as though seeking his absolution as well.

Enjolras still looks stiff, like he doesn’t know how to relax here. Courfeyrac thinks that they might need to get him drunk.

“Did Joly take that same seminar?” Grantaire asks, forcing his attention back to Combeferre. “Because he’s been talking to Eponine about the hazards of drug abuse for the last half hour.”

Courfeyrac laughs and Combeferre groans. “Is he really?” he asks.

“Bossuet’s been helping Chetta mix drinks so far, otherwise I think one of them would have tried to extract him by now.”

“Poor thing,” Courfeyrac says, glancing over his shoulder to see how Eponine is holding up. They’ve all been in this situation before, because as charming and pleasant as Joly normally is, he can get rather desperate while extolling the vices of whatever has him worked up.

“Are you sure it’s safe to have people smoking here anyway?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire’s expression hardens a little. “It’s fine, Apollo—”

“Stop calling me Apollo. It’s a stupid nickname.”

“—no one who’s getting high is going to be driving or operating heavy machinery, okay? My friends are all pretty responsible about this sort of thing.”

“And everyone else?” Enjolras asks.

“What about them? It’s not like we’re going around drugging everyone against their will. If you want some weed, ask and they’ll probably share, but mostly they’re going to mind their own business—which is what you should be doing.”

Courfeyrac cuts in before Enjolras can say anything, knowing that if Enjolras says anything at this point, it’s not going to end well. “Hey, R,” he says, using the nickname he’s heard both Jehan and Eponine use on a variety of occasions, “Is there anything to eat around here?”

 “Yeah, yeah,” Grantaire says. He waves his hand over toward the kitchen. “Just, uh, just stay away from the brownies, okay?”

There’s a beat of silence and then Courfeyrac bursts out laughing, knowing that there’s only one reason to be warned off a tray of brownies at a party like this. He claps Grantaire on the shoulder again, soliciting a smile from his friend, and then heads off in the direction of the kitchen, trusting that Combeferre will be able to keep Enjolras from saying anything else that will upset Grantaire. As he walks, he spots Marius standing in a corner by the stereo system, holding an unopened beer in one hand and wearing the most ridiculous expression on his face. He worries for a split second that Marius ate one of the aforementioned brownies, but quickly brushes off the concern. Surely no one here would be so careless as to let Marius eat a pot brownie.

He walks over to Marius and plucks the beer out of his hand. He untwists the cap and takes a swig. “How long have you been standing here?” he asks.

“She’s here.”

“Doesn’t answer my question,” he says. “How long have you just been standing here with that stupid look on your face?”

“No, Courf, she’s here.”

“Who is?”

Marius nods his head across the room. Courfeyrac glances over his shoulder and sees Eponine still on the couch with another girl and Joly, although Combeferre has drifted closer, probably trying to reason with Joly while still keeping an eye on Enjolras who appears to be talking relatively amicably with Grantaire at the moment.

“Eponine lives here,” he says. “Of course she’s here.”

“Not Eponine,” he says. “The blonde girl. My blonde girl.”

He glances over his shoulder and for the first time really takes notice of the girl sitting next to Eponine. She’s pretty, petite, and blonde, and she’s got a look on her face like she’s really not sure what to make of what Joly’s saying. (Not that Courfeyrac can blame her, because he’s pretty certain that he wore that expression for the first month that he knew Joly.) “That’s the girl you’ve been mooning over for the last two months?”

“Isn’t she _wonderful_?” Marius asks.

Courfeyrac licks his lips to keep from laughing at Marius, because he’s the most love-struck fool Courfeyrac has ever met. “She’s pretty enough, I suppose. Not really my type.”

“I was getting something to eat—Eponine told me to stay away from the brownies, I think someone must have burned them—and I saw her from across the room. Her eyes, Courf, I know it’s dark, so you don’t get the full effect, but she has the most beautiful eyes I have seen. When the light catches them just right, they—”

“Hold up,” he says. “Have you literally just been standing here in the corner staring at her this whole time?”

“I haven’t been staring,” he says.

Which means yes, he has been staring. “Have you at least _talked_ to her? Introduced yourself?”

“I wouldn’t know what to say,” he says.

“You could start with, ‘Hi, my name’s Marius and I apologize for staring at you like a twit for the last hour.’”

“This is important,” Marius says. “I can’t afford to screw this up.”

Courfeyrac sighs. “Just go introduce yourself,” he says. “You’ve talked to girls you like before—”

“This is different.”

“No,” he says, “it’s not. You’ve been obsessing about her for a few months, but that’s really no different from any of the girls you liked in high school.”

“I don’t want to screw this up.”

“You’re not going to screw it up,” he says. He glances back over at the couch. Bossuet has come around to save Eponine and the blonde girl from Joly. “Look, I’ll go over there with you and I’ll sit and chat with Eponine and you can at the very least introduce yourself to your mysterious blonde woman, and I’ll be close enough to keep you from shoving your foot in your mouth.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Course I will,” Courfeyrac says. He takes Marius by the arm and shoves him toward the couch. “Now go before you miss your chance. I’ll be right behind you.”

He watches Marius make his first blushing advances with the girl and once he’s satisfied that his appearance won’t derail their entire conversation, he goes over to the couch and takes the seat that Joly recently vacated and sits next to Eponine. He feels a twinge of guilt when he sees the expression on her face as she watches Marius and the girl talk.

He shouldn't have sent Marius over here like this.

“Good party,” he says, trying to pull her attention away from the other two.

She offers him a weak sort of smile. “Thanks, I guess. I didn’t do much other than open the door and let people in.”

“Well, you did a marvelous job of it, darling,” he says, soliciting a stronger smile from her. “You could probably make a living off that, you know. Opening doors.”

There’s a knock on the door, but before Eponine can get up to answer it, the door swings open and Grantaire is already half-way to the door to greet the most recent guests.

 “Oh great,” Eponine mutters. Five or six people come in, including Jehan who practically launches himself into Grantaire’s arms, causing him to stumble back a little. “They all had to come.”

Courfeyrac manages to pull his gaze away from Jehan, who’s grinning and a little bug-eyed and pressing a kiss to Grantaire’s cheek, and looks at Eponine. “They all?”

“The one in the leather jacket,” she says, nodding towards the man who’s carefully pulling Jehan away from Grantaire and slapping something into his hand in return, “is Montaparnasse.”

“Jehan’s boyfriend.”

“That’s right,” she says. “And he’s brought with him his closest friends—Babet, Gueulemer, and Claquesous. They’re not…they’re not exactly the sort of people I want in my house. I should have expected it, though. I knew Jehan was going to bring Parnasse, and Parnasse never comes to a party without the rest of them. It’s not like I couldn’t invite Jehan to get rid of the rest of them, though. He and R are best friends.”

“I’m sure we could convince Bahorel to kick them out if you want,” he says, glancing at Bahorel who’s currently dancing with a girl on the other side of the room. “I’m sure he’d love the chance to impress that girl by throwing out some thugs for you.”

“No,” she says. “The last thing we need is to piss them off.”

Courfeyrac looks back at the group, carefully keeping his eyes away from Jehan and the way he drapes himself on his boyfriend’s arm, and he recognizes Gueulemer from the coffee shop a few weeks back. He alone could do damage to this apartment or the people inside of it if he took offense at being kicked out. “I see your point,” he concedes.

“Just…” she sighs, as though her night is effectively ruined. “Just be careful with what you eat and drink for the rest of the night, okay? And make sure the others know it too. I trust everyone else here, but not that lot.”

Eponine pulls Grantaire away from Jehan and Montparnasse and drags him to the kitchen, where Courfeyrac suspects that they are going to have a rather serious talk about who just showed up and what that means for the party.

Courfeyrac passes word to his friends to be cautious of their food and drinks and he’s not surprised when Joly, Bossuet, and Chetta bow out pretty quickly after that. If Joly was having a hard enough time knowing that there were people in the house were smoking weed, he was definitely would not linger if he thought there was even the fraction of a chance that he or someone he cared about was going to get drugged against their will.

In some part of his mind, he notices the way that Babet and Claquesous drift to a group of girls dancing together near the speakers and how Gueulemer corners another girl he’d seen chatting with Enjolras a little while ago. But mostly he can’t take his eyes off Jehan.

And Jehan’s boyfriend.

He’s not certain if Jehan is drunk or high or what, but he’s not acting like himself. He’s smiling, but it’s not his usual smile. It’s a little less bright, a little more vacant. He’s always been physically affectionate with people he’s been close to, but now whenever anyone gets close to him, he leans into them as though he craves physical contact. After a while, he sheds his oversized sweater, revealing underneath a tightly-fitted t-shirt to go with his tightly-fitted jeans, and he settles into an armchair with Montparnasse.

Correction: Montparnasse settles onto the arm chair and Jehan settles onto his lap.

Their chair—it’s their chair now. Courfeyrac will never be able to come back to this apartment and see it as anything other than _their chair_ —is near enough where Feuilly and Combeferre were talking that Jehan can easily join their conversation, and he must be sober enough (or at least coherent enough) that he can converse with them, because Combeferre doesn’t look nearly as concerned as Courfeyrac thinks he should be.

Montparnasse says something that makes Combeferre and Feuilly laugh and the whole time he can’t seem to stop touching Jehan—rubbing his hands up and down his arms, slipping his hand under Jehan’s shirt, nuzzling against his neck. Jehan leans into every touch as though it’s causing him pure bliss.

Courfeyrac gets to his feet.

Jealousy is an ugly emotion. He knows that. He’s been with people before who are nothing but jealous monsters and it’s not attractive, and he hates himself a little for the jealousy he feels now because he wants to be the one who can touch Jehan like that. He wants to be the one who causes Jehan to feel that kind of pleasure.

But right alongside the jealousy is a vague kind of sickness, because Jehan is clearly high. Possibly drunk, but Courfeyrac thinks his movements are too coordinated for him to be drunk. But either way, Jehan is intoxicated and Montparnasse doesn’t seem to be at all, even though there’s a joint tucked behind his ear. And he knows that Jehan loves and trusts his boyfriend—heaven knows that he’s heard Jehan say that enough times—but this entire situation makes him feel uncomfortable, because while Jehan might trust his boyfriend, Courfeyrac does nothing of the sort and he can’t stand the thought of anyone taking advantage of the poet. Part of him wants to stand here the entire night, making sure that Montparnasse doesn’t abuse Jehan in anyway.

But most of him wants to leave because the sight of the two of them together is making him sick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luckily the Land of Unreliable Internet has far more reliable internet access than it did the last time I was here. There was much rejoicing.
> 
> Happy Christmas Eve to the Christmas-celebrators among you, and Happy Winter Holiday of Your Choosing for the rest of you :)
> 
> Next Chapter should be up by Friday


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire's Birthday Party--Part the Second

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise Chapter Update! Since this chapter and the previous one happen on the same night, I thought I'd post this chapter early as something of a Christmas present :) I hope you all enjoy

“Well,” Eponine says after she’s pulled Grantaire into the back hall near their bedrooms, far away from their guests. “Your birthday party is well and truly over.”

“What?”

She gives him a look. Eponine has always been a master—a mistress?—of looks. This one says, _Don’t fuck with me, Grantaire, because I am not in the mood_. “Parnasse brought his freaking gang along,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “I welcomed them in.”

“And Enjolras and Combeferre and that whole lot is still over,” she says.

“Oh.” He realizes now where she’s been going with this the whole time. The kids he knows from his art classes wouldn’t be bothered by the sudden appearance of a group of criminals. Hell, they wouldn’t even be surprised by it, because he’s sure that at least a few of them buy drugs off Montparnasse. But Enjolras, whose sense of justice is probably the most stable thing Grantaire has ever seen in his life? Yeah, this isn’t going to go well. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s not like we can kick them out.”

Well, actually, now that he thinks about, he’s pretty sure they could kick Enjolras and that crowd out, but he doesn’t _want_ to. These are the people that he actually wanted to come to his party. He didn’t really even want Montparnasse to come—though he certainly appreciates the birthday gift of three grams of weed that Parnasse pressed into his palm when he greeted him—but Montparnasse and Jehan are more or less a package deal when it comes to parties like this, so he expected the older man to come.

He didn’t expect him to bring along the others.

Eponine leans back against the wall. “I don’t even want to imagine what Gueulemer would do if we tried to kick him out—you don’t think he’s high, do you? I mean, Jehan’s clearly high off his ass. What about the others?”

Grantaire shakes his head. “Parnasse knows we’re not above calling the police on them,” he says. In fact, if things turn sour and they do have to call the police, he’s far more worried about suffering Jehan’s wrath than Montparnasse’s.

“If they start fucking around,” Eponine says, “you’re going to have to do something.”

“I’ll talk to Parnasse,” he says. “I’ll make sure that he knows to keep them in line.”

“This isn’t even the worst of it,” she says.

“There’s something worse than a gang of criminals crashing a party at our place?”

“You know that blonde Marius is always prattling on about?”

“How could I not?”

“It’s Cosette.”

“Shit.”

“That about sums it up, yeah.”

And that explains why Eponine seems so high strung, because she’s usually not the type to get worked up about something like Montparnassse being an inconsiderate jerk. In fact, she’s usually the type to tell Montparnasse exactly where to shove it if she thinks he’s acting out of line.

But she’s always been a bit soft-hearted about Marius ever since he moved in across the hall six months ago. He knows she’s been hoping that Marius’s mysterious blonde girl would remain mysterious and he knows it probably kills her a little to discover that it’s Cosette, of all people. They’ve known Cosette when they were little, but lost track of her after her mom died and she was taken in by an extremely generous man. Cosette and Eponine reconnected on Facebook in high school and they’re great friends, but Grantaire knows that Eponine’s always been a little jealous of how nicely Cosette’s life has turned out.

And now Cosette’s gotten the boy Eponine’s been pining over. Worse yet, Cosette got the boy because Eponine invited them to the same party.

“Do you want me to kick them out?” he asks. The idea of kicking everyone out and ending this disaster of a party is beginning to sound better and better.

“No,” she says. She drags her hand through her hair. “No, you don’t need to do that. I just want something to drink, you know?”

“Unless Babet already got to them, we still have some of the drinks Chetta mixed in the kitchen.”

“That sounds perfect,” she says. “And you’ll talk to Parnasse?”

“I’ll talk to Parnasse,” he promises.

He finds Montparnasse with Jehan near the table they have set up for drinks and Montparnasse is coaxing Jehan to drink from a water bottle, even though Jehan seems more intent on running his fingers across Montparnasse’s face and neck. He catches Jehan’s wandering fingers with one hand and moves them aside, holding the water bottle up to Jehan’s lips.

“C’mon, babe,” he says. “You’re getting overheated. I need you to drink this.”

Jehan looks over Montparnasse’s shoulder and spots Grantaire. He leans into Montparnasse, spilling some water over both of them, and he reaches out to Grantaire, fingertips brushing across his face.

“R, happy birthday,” he says. “It’s such a wonderful day.”

This close, Grantaire can see that Jehan’s eyes are dilated and he can feel the way Jehan’s fingers tremble against his skin. When Jehan’s fingers linger against his lips, Grantaire presses a chaste kiss to his friend’s fingertips.

Jehan giggles and pulls his hand away, finally accepting the water bottle Montparnasse has been trying to force on him.

“Parnasse, I need a word,” he says.

“I’m a little busy here,” he says, tightening his arm around Jehan’s waist. Grantaire doesn’t miss the way his hand slips under Jehan’s shirt or the way Jehan’s eyelids flutter at the skin-to-skin contact. “And do you think you could open a fucking window? It’s boiling in here.”

“It feels so lovely,” Jehan says, leaning in close to Montparnasse and grinding against him. He presses kisses to Montparnasse’s neck. “It’s not hot at all. Why won’t you kiss me? Please, Mont, please kiss me.”

Montparnasse obliges and Grantaire reaches for a beer off the table so he doesn’t have to watch them.

“Ponine’s pissed that you brought the whole gang with you,” he says once Montparnasse untangles himself from Jehan. When Jehan reaches out to him again to trace the line of his arm, his shoulder, his jaw with trembling fingers, Grantaire doesn’t push him away. He’s seen Jehan like this before and he knows that physical contact is what he enjoys most when he’s rolling like this.

“What? Did you really expect me to leave them behind?” Montparnasse says. He shifts so he’s standing behind Jehan, one hand on his hip and the other tracing patterns on Jehan’s skin. “A party with an open bar? You both know me better than that.”

“You shouldn’t piss off Ponine,” Jehan says, his words slurring a little. “She’s already sad because her boy’s gone off with golden hair.”

“Last time you brought them along, Gueulemer put his fist through our window.”

“I made him pay you back for that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not something we want to see happen again.”

Jehan reaches out to touch his face. His fingers are bolder this time, caressing instead of flitting over skin. “You look so serious,” he says. “You don’t have to be. The world is so beautiful and filled with such beautiful souls, R. There is…there is such grace in your body. You need to enjoy it. Let me help you enjoy it.”

“He’s right,” Montparnasse says. “This is a party and you need to lighten up.” He pulls his hands away from Jehan, who whimpers a little at the sudden loss of contact, so Grantaire reaches out to rub his arm the way he knows Jehan likes.

Montparnasse takes the joint that was tucked behind his ear, lights it, and passes it to Grantaire.

“Seriously, dude,” Parnasse says. “This is a party. More specifically, this is your fucking birthday party. Relax.”

Grantaire stares at the joint in his hand for a moment before bringing it to his lips.

Montparnasse laughs. “That’s the spirit. Now I’m gonna go open a fucking window before my boyfriend overheats. I’ll tell the others to mind their business, and you should start enjoying yourself, R. It’s your fucking birthday. Go find a bit of ass to chase.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes at him and watches him lead Jehan across the room and station him close to the window so that the fresh air can cool his overheated skin for a bit. He takes another drag from the joint. He can already start to feel himself relax. Looking around, he spots Courfeyrac sitting by himself on the couch, looking not unlike a puppy that someone left out in the rain.

He feels a twinge of sympathy because he knows how Courfeyrac feels about Jehan and he knows what it’s like to pine after someone who will clearly never be interested back. But at least he doesn’t think he’ll ever have to watch Enjolras act like Jehan is now. He’ll never have to watch the object of his affections drape himself all over another man.

Crossing the room, he takes a seat next to Courfeyrac and holds out the joint to him.

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “I don’t smoke.”

Grantaire nods and takes another hit. He looks around the room for Enjolras, wondering if he’s watching, wondering if he’s judging, but he and Combeferre are nowhere to be found.

“I didn’t know he did drugs,” Courfeyrac asks. He’s watching Jehan grind against Montparnasse, almost completely oblivious to the rest of the world around him.

“He doesn’t very often,” he says, which is true because Jehan has always been far more responsible about his drug use than Grantaire has.

“Do you have any idea what he’s on?”

“Judging from the way he can’t stop touching everyone, I’d say ecstasy,” he says. “Montparnasse might have cut it with something else, but I don’t think Jehan’s flipping, so probably not.”

“Flipping?”

“It’s…never mind,” he says. “It’s complicated.”

“Does he do this often?”

“E is his special occasion drug,” R says. Part of him knows that it’s probably a bad sign that he can talk about his friend’s drug habits so casually, but most of him can’t be bothered to care. “He only takes it when he’s already happy or having a good time, says the roll blocks out any anxiety so he can just enjoy feeling good. It’s not addictive, you know. He’s not an addict.”

Courfeyrac nods. “This sucks,” he says.

“You don’t have to stay. If it’d be easier not to watch—”

“Is it weird that I want to stay to make sure he’s okay? I mean, none of my friends are really into anything like this—I mean, you’ve met them, they’re all practically boy scouts—and I don’t want something bad to happen to him, especially if I’m not here to help.”

“This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but Montparnasse knows what he’s doing,” Grantaire says. “He knows the dangers and the warning signs. He’s not going to let anything happen to Jehan.”

“Does he really love Jehan, then?”

“I think so,” Grantaire says. “In his way. He’s not exactly the man you’d picture Jehan with, but they’re good for each other.”

“And Jehan’s happy with him?”

“Happier than I’ve seen him with anyone else.”

“Shit,” Courfeyrac says.

They sit on the couch together and as Grantaire relaxes more, he can fill the silence between them with mindless talk to keep Courfeyrac’s mind off Jehan and Montparnasse. They’re joined by Feuilly, who doesn’t seem to mind at all that Grantaire is getting high and Courfeyrac is sulking. He tells them about the girl who’s most likely going home with Bahorel tonight, which is more effective at occupying Courfeyrac’s thoughts than anything Grantaire has said the whole night. In the middle of Feuilly’s story, Grantaire nearly gets up because Babet and Claquesous have somehow procured everything they need for body shots and all he can think is that (1) Enjolras will be appalled and (2) it’ll only be a matter of time before Montparnasse is doing shots off Jehan and that’s not something Courfeyrac needs to see, but Montparnasse steps in when he catches the way Eponine glares at him from across the room.

Satisfied that Montparnasse has everything under control, Grantaire turns his attention back to Feuilly, whose story he finds more entertaining than he probably should.

Midsentence, though, Feuilly cuts himself off, his attention caught by something across the room. “Um, guys, do we need to send a rescue mission for Enjolras?”

Grantaire looks up to see what Feuilly’s talking about. Enjolras is backed against the wall near the kitchen and Jehan stands so close to him that he’s practically on top of him. Grantaire glances around and sees that Montparnasse is still talking Babet and Claquesous out of the idea of body shots and he assumes that in his distraction, Jehan has gone off to make nice with someone else.

Grantaire sighs and gets to his feet. “I’ll take care of this,” he says, because he knows that neither Courfeyrac nor Feuilly would have any idea how to handle Jehan when he’s like this.

As he approaches, he can hear Jehan speaking.

“You really are so beautiful,” he says. His fingers trace lines over Enjolras’s cheeks, nose, lips, throat, and Enjolras looks stiff. He gently tries to grab Jehan’s wrists and force his hands away, but Jehan is persistent. “And a thing of beauty is a joy forever. You will never know, never know the way your soul can light up a room. You’re so light. You exude light, Enjolras, and it’s beautiful.”

“Really, Jehan,” he says, his voice tight. “That’s enough now.” Enjolras manages to pull Jehan’s hands away from his face, but Jehan quickly latches on to the front of his shirt.

“Sometimes the light is cold,” Jehan says, oblivious to Enjolras’s discomfort. “And that’s beautiful too, but it’s also sad. You need to let us in. Let me in. Your light is better warm. Let me make you warm. Let’s make each other glow, Enjolras.”

“Jehan, you’re high. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You don’t see it, do you? You don’t see how strong you are when you’re warm, when you’re light. You’re like the sun, Enjolras. R has always said it. He says—”

“I think you’re scaring him, Jehan,” Grantaire says, putting a hand on Jehan’s shoulder and cutting him off before he can say anything more.

Jehan pulls back from Enjolras—the relief on his face is nearly palpable—and he leans his full weight against Grantaire. “Tell him, R,” he says. “You need to tell him.”

“I think he’s heard enough for tonight.”

Jehan turns around to look at him. They’re standing so close that Jehan has to crane his neck to look properly at him. “You’re beautiful too,” he says. “But you’re more like the moon rather than the sun. You know that, don’t you? You know that you’re beautiful. Your soul is beautiful. And your heart, I can hear it Grantaire. You have a beautiful heart.”

He takes a step back from Jehan, putting some distance between their bodies before Jehan decides to start grinding against him. “Whatever you say, Jehan,” he says. “But I think your boyfriend misses you.”

“Mont? Where is Mont? He left me alone—”

“I know,” Grantaire says. He gently turns Jehan toward Montparnasse. “He’s right over there. Why don’t you go back to him and leave poor Enjolras alone?”

Jehan lingers for a moment. He tilts his head towards Enjolras and reaches out to stroke his face once more. Enjolras catches him by the wrist before he gets the chance.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Jehan says. “I just thought you needed to know.”

“Mont’s waiting for you,” Grantaire says with patience he doesn’t feel.

“Right,” Jehan says. He looks back at Grantaire with wide eyes and a wider smile. “I don’t want you to forget what I said. Don’t forget what I said.” He leans in and presses his mouth against Grantaire’s. “Beautiful heart,” he says when he pulls back.

Without another word, he goes to join Montparnasse, who welcomes him with open arms.

“What was that about?” Enjolras asks.

“Relax,” Grantaire says. “He’s just a little high. He’s harmless.”

“Harmless? I’m not worried about what he’d do to me,” he says. Grantaire recognizes the signs of his blooming temper—the ways his cheeks flush and the way his jaw tenses. He’s spent the last month goading Enjolras into losing his temper because he delights in unwinding a man who puts so much emphasis on holding himself together, but he has the feeling that he’s scratching at something more than Enjolras’s surface temper right now. “I’m worried about what other people will do to him!”

“Yeah, because he’s clearly in danger from his boyfriend.”

“Do you really think he’s in any condition to be around anyone right now? He’s not thinking straight. He can’t informed decisions—”

“What kind of decisions do you think he needs to be making right now? He’s high, Enjolras. People get high. The world’s not going to end because of it.”

Enjolras glances at the joint in his hand. “And it’s completely irresponsible of you to let Jehan—”

“Woah,” Grantaire says. “Who says I _let_ Jehan do anything? In case it’s escaped your notice, he’s an adult! He can make his own decisions!”

“So you’re saying he’d have done this without your influence?”

His stomach twists because he knows that Jehan got high for the first time when he was sixteen because of Grantaire. He knows he’s the one who introduced Jehan to the idea of self-medicating with illegal substances and he knows that Jehan probably never would have had the nerve to try anything like this if Grantaire hadn’t tried it with him first.

But that’s not the point.

“First off, he was high when he showed up,” he says. “His call, his choice. I had nothing to do with it. So stop acting like he needs someone to make decisions for him, because he doesn’t. Second, he knows what he’s doing. _I_ know what I’m doing. We’re not idiot teenagers sitting in our parents’ basement doing this just for the thrill. We know the risks—and just because you’re too scared to let loose every once in a while doesn’t mean that the rest of us are.”

“You call this letting loose? Do you have any idea what this shit does to you?”

“Yeah, I do actually.”

Enjolras plucks the joint from his fingers. “This? This is a waste of who you are. This isn’t letting loose. This is killing brain cells. This is turning you from an intelligent man into a brainless ass. This turned Jehan from a thoughtful, articulate young man into that!”

He gestures over at Jehan, who is pressed up against Montparnasse and seems to be trying to convince Montparnasse that body shots would be a _really_ good idea right now. To be fair, this isn’t exactly a banner moment for Jehan, and Grantaire is fairly certain that the only reason Montparnasse is still refusing is because Eponine still looks like she’ll castrate him if he tries.

“What does it matter?” Grantaire says. “Come morning, he’ll be back to who you want him to be—”

“This has nothing to do with who I want him to be.”

“Oh really? Because it seems to me that you can’t stand being around anyone who doesn’t measure up to your standard of perfection!”

“Oh, don’t you even—”

“Sorry, Enjolras, I guess the rest of us mere mortals can’t—” 

“—put those words in my mouth—”

“—live up to your lofty expectations—”

“This has nothing to do with my standards—”

“I’ll understand if you don’t want—”

“—and everything to do with the fact—”

“—to hang around with the likes of—”

“—I won’t sit by and watch you ruin your life—”

“—pot-heads. I know what it’ll do to your sparkly reputation.”

“—under the influence of narcotics.”

“And how is it your business if I want to ruin my life or not?” Grantaire finishes. He’s practically out of breath and he only caught bits and pieces of Enjolras’s tirade—but Enjolras is just as red in the face as he is.

“It’s my business,” Enjolras snaps, “because seeing you like this is a waste of your mind and your talent. You’re worthless like this! You’ll never amount to anything if you keep wasting your life on this crap!”

Grantaire feels cold, though he can’t say any of this is really a surprise. There is no other way this argument could have played out, because he knows every word from Enjolras’s mouth is the truth. Enjolras always speaks the truth, and his words spiral in Grantaire’s mind. _Waste of talent. Worthless. Never amount to anything. Good for nothing._ Part of him isn’t sure if Enjolras actually said all that or if his mind is just filling in the gaps.

“Ladies and gentleman,” he says, knowing that they’ve attracted an audience by now. Even Jehan, his body still pressed against Montparnasse’s, is silent and staring. “May I present to you the newest member of the ‘I think Grantaire is a waste of space’ club.”

“That’s not what I said,” Enjolras says, his voice quiet for a change.

“But we both know that’s exactly what you meant.”

Enjolras doesn’t deny it.

“Now if you don’t mind,” he says, taking the joint back from Enjolras. “I have a party to enjoy, and I’m finding that rather hard to do with your standards getting in my way.”

Enjolras is smart. He knows a dismissal when he hears one.  “Have a good birthday,” he says gruffly, before brushing past him and bee-lining straight for the door.

Courfeyrac follows him out of the apartment.

“You really shouldn’t invite fuck-nut killjoys to your parties,” Montparnasse says, breaking the wake of silence that follows Enjolras’s departure.

He cuts Montparnasse a slashing look, because he doesn’t want to deal with anyone else’s shit right now. “Go fuck yourself, Parnasse,” he says.

He grabs a six-pack from the nearby table and retreats back to his room to nurse his wounds in private.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barring any unforeseen disasters, the next chapter will be up on Friday :)
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire's Birthday Party--Part the Aftermath

Eponine spends nearly an hour in Grantaire’s room trying to talk him down from doing something stupid and by the time she feels confident enough to leave Grantaire alone in his room, the party has more or less killed itself. Most of the guests have left, leaving only a few stragglers behind. Montparnasse and Jehan are still around, of course, and they seem to be making use of the fact that there’s hardly anyone around to care what they get up to on the couch. As long as clothes stay on, she doesn’t really care what they get up to either.

And they’re not the only happy couple who stayed behind, because the newly formed Marius-and-Cosette have taken up residence at the kitchen table. They’re so sickeningly cute that Eponine wants to puke, or maybe go back to R’s room and help him finish off that six-pack. She forces herself not to cry, even though the sight of them _so happy_ together makes her want to. This whole night has been one disaster after another, and the only thing she thinks she can even consider a success is that fact that she kept Montparnasse and his crew from starting body shots.

She turns off the stereo and starts to clear off the empty bottles and red Solo cups so she can shift their entertainment center back into place. She knows she should really wait for Grantaire to do this for her—or at the very least pull Montparnasse away from Jehan and make him do this—because the entertainment center weighs a _ton_ , but she doesn’t like waiting around for people to do things for her. She doesn’t like having to depend on people, because she can never trust them not to let her down.

She grunts as she lifts the console a fraction of the inch off the ground and tries to tug it back to the corner where it belongs.

She looks up when the weight suddenly gets lighter and sees Combeferre helping her with a soft smile on his face.

“Let me help,” he says.

“I can handle it,” she says.

“I’m sure you can,” he says. Most guys would sound condescending if they talked to her like that, but Combeferre, as usual, is nothing but sincerity. “But I’d like to help anyway.”

“It just goes over against the wall over here,” she says. She’s fully aware of the fact that Combeferre is pulling most of the weight—for someone so bookish, he’s quite strong—and she’s grateful for his help. When they’ve gotten the entertainment center back where it belongs, she says, “I thought you left with Enjolras.”

Comeberre shakes his head. “Courfeyrac went off to run damage control with him,” he says. “Which is probably for the best, because Courf wasn’t exactly enjoying himself to begin with.”

He glances over at Montparnasse, who has Jehan pinned to couch. She thinks they’re both still fully clothed, but from this angle, it’s hard to tell.

She grabs an empty cup and lobs it at Montparnasse’s head. He pulls back from Jehan and swears at her.

“The party’s over,” she says. “Go home.”

Montparnasse climbs off the couch and pulls Jehan to his feet. Instead of heading to the door, he heads back to the bedrooms in the back of the apartment. “He’s peaking, Ponine,” he says as he goes. “We’re just gonna borrow your spare room for a bit.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re changing the sheets before you leave.”

Montparnasse laughs at her.

A moment later, Marius and Cosette creep out of the kitchen. They’re holding hands.

“Sorry, Ep,” Cosette says. “We lost track of time. We didn’t realize the party ended.”

She wonders if they’d been paying attention to anything at all all night, because if they’d heard Grantaire and Enjolras at all, they’d know the party has long since been over.

“It’s fine,” she says, when really she just wants them to get out of her home.

“Thanks, uh, thanks for the party,” Marius says sheepishly as they head out the door.

She can hear them giggle in the hall.

She turns to Combeferre. “Thanks for helping me move the thing,” she says, gesturing back to the entertainment center. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Do you need help cleaning up?” he asks. “I don’t mind staying behind.”

Part of her wants to refuse, but the other part of her thinks that Combeferre is being so nice and she really doesn’t want to be alone right now, especially with Grantaire in his room getting wasted and Jehan and Montparnasse in the other room doing who-knows-what to each other. “I’d like that,” she says.

Combeferre smiles at her again and starts gathering up the debris that litters her living room. “Do you mind if I ask how Grantaire’s doing?”

“He’s upset,” she says. _He’s spiraling. Enjolras landed blows on all his weak spots and it makes me want to scream because I don’t care if R thinks he’s perfect, that doesn’t give him the right to go around running his mouth like that_. “He’s drinking it off.”

She looks at Combeferre as if daring him to point out what a bad coping mechanism that is.

But Combeferre nods. “Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “We’ll see in the morning.”

“You don’t have to answer this if it’s too personal,” Combeferre says, “but does Grantaire suffer from depression?”

“How did you know?” she asks, because it’s not like it’s some great secret.

He shrugs. “I’ve got a cousin my age who’s manic depressive. I guess I just recognized some of the signs, and I’ve noticed the scars on his arms.”

She decides not to mention that particular fact to Grantaire because he’s so ashamed and self-conscious of those scars. She and Jehan view them as badges of survival, but for Grantaire they represent shame and weakness. “I’m surprised you’re not taking Enjolras’s side in all of this.”

She grabs the trash bin and holds it out to Combeferre so he can get rid of the cups and bottles he’s been collecting.

“Enj and I have been best friends since we were little,” he says. “He’s a great man and I’d follow him to the ends of the earth because I believe in him and I believe in what he stands for, but he’s not perfect. He makes mistakes. And he’s never been good at handling emotionally charged situations—especially one-on-one—and when he’s angry, he speaks before he thinks. Grantaire’s not the only one Enjolras has torn into like that. Two years ago, he raked Courfeyrac over the coals for one thing or another—I think he was upset about one of Courf’s flings—but Courf can just laugh off things like that. He doesn’t take it to heart, and afterwards, things were just the same as they always were between the two of them. It’s not Grantaire’s fault that he can’t shrug it off, and Enjolras needs to learn that he can’t use his words like weapons like that—especially not against his friends.”

“Oh, so Grantaire is his friend, now?”

Combeferre chuckles a little. It’s a warm sound. “Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Enjolras actually likes Grantaire. He values his opinions and his thoughts. He just...doesn’t know how to deal with him when he’s drunk. Or high, as the case may be.”

He takes the trash can from her and nods toward the dirty dishes on the table.

“Let me help you with the dishes.”

“If I didn’t know better,” she says, “I’d say you were trying to get in my pants.”

Comebeferre laughs, but he doesn’t blush (which is what Marius would have done if she’d ever said anything like that to her). “It’s all part of my dastardly plan to woo women by being a decent human being,” he says. “But seriously, you shouldn’t have to clean up all on your own. I know this night must have been a disaster for you as well. You just wanted to throw your friend a birthday party, and then all this happened. Dishes and clean-up is the least I can do.”

“I’m never going to throw a birthday party again,” she says. “I’ll wash if you dry?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Combeferre helps her gather up the dirty dishes and gets her laughing when he tries to mimic her ability to carry multiple dishes at a time (thank you, years of menial labor as a waitress) and ends up dropping the plates everywhere. Thankfully, all the dishes in his care are plastic and don’t shatter when they crash to the floor.

She washes the dishes and hands them off to Combeferre to dry, and as she does, he keeps up a steady stream of questions, asking her about everything from her siblings to her major at school and what she wants to do with a psychology degree. The conversation between them is easy and she feels herself relax in his company, like he’s slowly unwinding the spool of stress that she’d somehow wound throughout the night.

While they do dishes, Montparnasse and Jehan finish their tryst in the spare bedroom—if she finds out that Montparnasse didn’t change the sheets like she told him, she’ll kill him—and Jehan is obviously starting to come down from his high. His movements are slow and languid and Montparnasse has procured a joint for him, but he’s still all smiles and wide eyes as they leave. Montparnasse wants to make a quick exit—no doubt wanting to get home before Jehan crashes completely—but Jehan insists on a proper goodbye for both Combeferre and Eponine.

His speech is so slurred at this point that Eponine’s not sure what he tries to say to her, but he does give her and Combeferre both a kiss on the cheek before stumbling back to Montparnasse and out the door. Combeferre, to his credit, doesn’t look perturbed at all.

Once Montparnasse and Jehan are gone, though, she can see the concern on his face.

“Jehan will be okay with him, won’t he?” Combeferre asks.

“Whatever other failings he might have,” Eponine says, “Montparnasse does know the risks associated with whatever Jehan took tonight. He’ll look out for him.”

“Hazards of being pre-med,” Combeferre says. “I worry about the health of everyone I meet. In fact, it should generally be considered a miracle that I’m not a hypochondriac like Joly.”

She laughs as she hands him the last dish so he can dry it. “Well, you can rest easy because Montparnasse is a drug expert and he’s not above taking Jehan to the hospital if it comes to that. And you can rest double easy because after knowing Grantaire my whole life, I am well-versed in the dangers of alcohol poisoning, so I’ll be checking in on him all night.”

“You’re a good friend,” Comebeferre says, adding the now-dry dish to the stack to his left. “He’s lucky to have you.”

“I like to think so.” She turns to him and smiles. “Thanks again for staying behind to clean up.”

“I’m happy to help.”

“So, I’ll see you at the next meeting?”

His expression falters for a fraction of a second. “Yeah,” he says. “Of course.”

She walks him to the door and waits for him to shrug into his coat. “Do you want me to call a cab for you?”

“Oh, no,” he says. “I don’t live far, and I won’t mind the walk.”

She pulls open the door for him and he steps outside. “I’ll see ya,” she says.

She’s about to close the door when he calls her name.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“I know this might seem a little a sudden,” he says, “but do you want to get dinner with me sometime this weekend?”

She hesitates for a moment, her eyes drifting across the hall to Marius’s door. She looks back at Comebeferre. She thinks he’s not as handsome as Marius is, and he doesn’t have the freckles that she adores so much on Marius, but Combeferre is nice and he’s funny and a night out where she doesn’t have to worry about Grantaire or her siblings sounds far too tempting.

“I’d like that,” she says.

Combeferre beams at her. “Does Friday at seven work for you?”

“Sure,” she says.

“All right,” he says. “It’s a date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading and for the comments and the kudos. You're all wonderful :)
> 
> Next chapter will be posted on Tuesday


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan helps Grantaire deal with aftermath of his shouting match with Enjolras

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, this chapter deals a lot with R's depression and some self-harm ideation, so please please be careful when you read

Jehan doesn’t wake up until nearly 11 the next morning, and even after he wakes up, he just lays in bed and stares at the ceiling for a bit. Mont is already awake, but he’s sitting in bed next to him with Jehan’s laptop on his lap. Jehan brushes his hand against Mont’s arm and Mont smiles down at him.

“There’s some water and a few vitamins on the bedside table,” he says. Experience has taught them both that vitamins are the best way to combat the inevitable drop in serotonin levels over the next few days. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” he says, massaging his jaw a little. “But good. Last night was good.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.”

“You had fun too, right?” He knows that sometimes Mont would rather enjoy the high with Jehan instead of through him, but Jehan had a bad reaction to ecstasy when he was seventeen and now Mont stays (relatively) sober when Jehan rolls in case it happens again.

Mont leans over and presses a kiss to his lips. “I always have fun with you, bird,” he says. “And you know I can’t resist you when you’re like that.”

“Don’t call me ‘bird,’” he says reflexively. Mont’s been calling him that since they met and Jehan’s not sure why, but in the last year it’s turned into a behind-closed-doors nickname. He’s still not fond of it, but Mont only ever uses it when they’re alone, and that means that it's special. He reaches over for the vitamins and the water on the nightstand.

“Your phone’s been buzzing all morning, by the way,” Mont says. “I think it’s in the pocket of your jeans.”

Jehan rolls out of bed and searches digs through the hamper for his jeans. He doesn’t remember falling asleep last night. He barely remembers leaving Eponine’s apartment last night and he figures that once they got home, Mont must have helped him undress before dumping him on the bed, because all he’s wearing now is a pair of boxer-briefs and the t-shirt he wore under his sweater last night. He pulls his jeans out of the hamper and fumbles around for his phone.

He has seven missed messages, all of them from Grantaire.

His stomach twists as he pulls up his messages because in some corner of his mind, he can remember Grantaire and Enjolras shouting at each other. He has no idea what they argued about, but he knows instinctively that it was bad.

Grantaire’s messages confirm that. They’re all of varying length and he doesn’t even bother reading most of them because the second message catches his attention. It’s just two words: _please come._

“Shit,” he says. Over the years, _please come_ has become their own personal code. It’s what Grantaire sent when he was in the emergency room with a broken arm after his dad kicked him out of the house. It’s what Jehan sent after his parents found out he was gay and he was panicking so bad he couldn’t breathe. It’s what Grantaire sent during the first semester of his sophomore year when he was seriously considering taking all of his anti-depressants in one go and chasing it down with a bottle of vodka. It’s what Jehan texted in his first week of college, when he became so paralyzed by the fear of failure that he couldn’t eat, sleep, or leave his dorm room for three days.

_Please come_ is their unspoken code that the sender needs the other and needs him fast.

“Jehan?”

“It’s Grantaire,” he says. He turns his jeans right-side out and hastily shimmies into them. “Shit. I’ve gotta go.”

Mont gets to his feet and hands him a pair of socks. “He okay?”

“No,” he says. He pulls on his socks. “Shit. I’ll probably spend the day with him, is that okay?” He fights the nausea in his stomach because Grantaire has been texting him for hours now and Jehan doesn’t know what sort of condition he’ll find Grantaire in when he finally shows up.

“Take all the time you need,” Mont says. He follows Jehan into the front of the apartment and while Jehan shoves his feet into his boots and grabs a sweater he’d abandoned on the couch a few days previously, Mont pulls his wallet out of the pocket of his leather jacket. He thrusts a couple of twenties at Jehan. “Take a cab there, all right? You’re not completely sober yet, and I don’t want you crashing your bike on the way there.”

He nods and pockets the cash.

Before he leaves, Mont takes him by the shoulders and looks into his eyes. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he says, placing a kiss against Jehan’s lips. “Try to eat something while you’re there, okay, bird? He’ll just be more upset if you make yourself sick over him. And if you or Grantaire need anything, you text me.”

Jehan pulls his boyfriend in for a hug, because this is what he loves most about Mont. He’s always calm in a crisis and he’s the stable foundation that Jehan can lean against when he needs to. “You’re the best,” he says. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says. “Text me once you get there.”

He nods and with one last kiss, he’s out the door. Almost as though the cabby can sense Jehan’s urgency, he gets to Grantaire’s apartment in record time and he lets himself in with the spare key they have hidden outside their door.

“R?” he calls, shutting the door behind him. “R, honey, where are you?”

Jehan goes back to Grantaire’s bedroom and finds his friend lying flat on his back and staring at the ceiling and Jehan climbs onto the bed to sit next to him. Grantaire looks like hell worked over, but he’s very much alive and Jehan nearly sighs in relief because the whole way over he kept imagining worst case scenarios—finding Grantaire in the bathroom with his wrists slashed, finding Grantaire hanging from the ceiling fan, not finding Grantaire at all and never knowing what happened to his friend.

Grantaire looks up at him.

“You look like shit,” he says.

Jehan laughs, well aware that it almost sounds like a sob. “You’re one to talk.” He reaches over and pushes Grantaire’s hair back from his face so that he can see better into his eyes. “I’m sorry it took so long to get here. I only just woke up.”

“I didn’t meant to bother you. I should have let you sleep.”

“You’re not a bother,” he says. He takes Grantaire’s hand in his and turns his palm up. He’s relieved to see no new cuts on his arm. “You’re never a bother.”

“How fucked up am I that I can’t even hold myself together without making you come here to hold my hand?”

“No more fucked up than I am,” he says. “Can I cuddle you a bit?”

Grantaire nods and Jehan shimmies down on the bed next to him, pressing his body close, trying to infuse as much love and affection for his friend into simple body contact. He hates seeing Grantaire like this. It always scares him to see someone he cares so much about looking so lost and hollowed out and empty. He shifts closer, resting his head on Grantaire’s chest and listening to the steady sound of his heart.

They lay together like that in silence.

After a while, Jehan sits up and he cradles Grantaire’s wrist in one hand and rubs his other hand up and down his forearm. He doesn’t know why it helps, only that it does.

Grantaire won’t look at him, so he bends forward and presses kisses against every scar on his arm. R never believes him when he says this, but scars don’t form on the dead and Jehan cherishes every scar as a sign that his friend was strong enough to keep fighting.

“Don’t.” Grantaire’s voice is thick and gruff.

Jehan pulls back.

“Shit, I shouldn’t have asked you to come. You’re still probably hung over from last night and—”

“And you’re not?” Jehan asks. “I’m here because I want to be here. I’m here because I want to be with you.”

He worries because it’s been ages since Grantaire was so low that he didn’t feel he deserved Jehan’s company. He traces patterns between the scars, careful not to touch any of them. He still has enough afterglow from the high last night that his heart seems to flutter when he touches Grantaire’s skin and he wishes he could share that feeling. He wishes he could bundle Grantaire in every good and beautiful feeling he’s ever had to make this all go away. He wishes that the tables were turned, because he feels much more capable of handling his own issues than shouldering Grantaire’s and if the tables were turned then Grantaire wouldn’t be like this. He’d be strong and stable and healthy and happy and that’s all Jehan has ever wanted for him.

Grantaire sits in silence and Jehan fills the space between them with the words of poets. He doesn’t even pay attention to who he’s quoting, though he takes care to stay away from Dickinson and Poe, and at one point he’s pretty sure he turned a John Keats poem into a Billy Collins one, but he doesn’t care and he doubts Grantaire even notices. What’s important is the sound of his voice, something constant to distract Grantaire from whatever awful diatribe of self-hate he has running in his head.

After an hour, Jehan turns on Netflix on Grantaire’s laptop because his throat is getting sore and he knows how uncomfortable silence can be for Grantaire. Once he’s satisfied that Grantaire will be okay on his own for a few minutes—when he’s breathing easy, when his eyes can focus, when he stops gripping his wrist like he’s fighting the urge to tear through the skin with his fingernails—Jehan goes to the kitchen and returns with bottled water for both of them and a plate of various finger foods that he pillaged from the fridge. He makes sure that Grantaire drinks some water, but he doesn’t pester him to eat because he doesn’t want to make him feel worse.

He does, however, make sure that he eats a little of everything on the plate himself even though he has no appetite to speak of and the idea of eating anything more than finger food makes his stomach roll. But Mont asked him to eat. Mont asked him to take care of himself even while he’s trying to take care of Grantaire. So he eats.

After a while, he pulls out the set of felt-tipped markers that Grantaire keeps in his desk and starts drawing and writing on Grantaire’s arms. Compared to Grantaire, his artistic abilities are downright laughable, but that’s part of why he likes doing this. If he screws up enough drawings, Grantaire will start to guess what he’s trying to draw. It gets him talking. It gets him out of his own mind for a little bit.

And between his botched stick figures, he likes to write poetry in calligraphy. He likes to cover every inch of Grantaire’s skin in color and words of strength that he can draw from when he needs to.

His fifth doodle is what prompts Grantaire into speaking.

“Is that stick figure supposed to be me?” he asks.

Jehan smiles up at him. “I drew your hair on so you’d know.”

“Why do I have a sheep tied to a tree with a noose?”

“It’s not a sheep. It doesn’t have legs.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s your mind,” he says. “And it’s a leash, not a noose.” The entire doodle is bizarre, he knows, but he stole the idea from the lyrics of a song he likes. He draws a speech bubble next to his stick-Grantaire and writes _I have news for you, you must obey me_.

“It’s not that easy.”

“I know,” Jehan says. “But it makes for such a pretty picture.”

“Do you remember what happened last night?”

“Not much of it,” he says. “Just bits and pieces. I think I may have tried to kiss Enjolras at one point, and I _know_ I kissed you, but everything else just kind of blurs together.”

“So you don’t remember Enjolras yelling at me.”

“I remember that someone was arguing,” he says. “But other than that, no, not really.”

“It’s fucked up, Jehan. Some guy I barely know reams me for smoking and what do I do—I go hide in my room with a six-pack of beer. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic.”

“You’re stronger than you know.”

“And it’s shit. Just shit. It’s like yeah, Apollo, I know what a royal fuck-up I am. I don’t need you to rub it in. I don’t need everyone else pointing out the fact that I’m worthless, that I can’t do anything right, that instead of actually dealing with my shit, I just bury it under weed and booze.”

“You’re my best friend,” Jehan says. “You’ve done that right.”

“Are you kidding me?” The bitterness in his voice makes Jehan flinch. “You showed up last night so high that you can’t even remember what happened.”

“And that was my choice, not yours.”

“Fuck, Jehan, even Enjolras knew that you’d never touch that shit if I hadn’t introduced you to it first.”

Jehan grips Grantaire’s wrist hard enough to get his attention. He doesn’t care that the marker ink smears over his hand. “R,” he says once Grantaire looks at him. “My problems and my own shitty coping mechanisms are _not_ your fault. Yes, you were with me the first time I got high, but I’ll remind you that I was the one who paid for it. It was my choice. It was always my choice. Next to Mont, you are the very best thing in my life, my very favorite person, and I don’t care what sort of blight on my existence you think you are, I’m not getting rid of you. Deal with it.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” he says.

Grantaire sighs and Jehan knows that he hasn’t won this argument. All he’s done is make Grantaire give up the fight.

“He’s still right, though.”

“Not about that, he wasn’t.”

“He said a lot more than that.”

“So what was he right about?”

“I’m a waste of talent. I’m never going to amount to anything because I can’t stop drinking. I’m probably going to end up dying drunk in a gutter five years from now, choking on my own vomit.”

“I have paintings of yours hanging in my apartment. You’re not a waste of talent. You have more talent in your pinky than most people have in their whole body.”

“And what do I do with it?” Grantaire sneers. “I drink until all I can see are the imperfections in my paintings and then I ruin them all so they’ll stop taunting me.”

He doesn’t dare ask if that’s what Grantaire did last night, because an affirmative answer would break his heart. “You battle demons on a daily basis that most people never even have to confront,” Jehan says. “I’m not going to fault you for trying to numb that.”

“I’m not the only one with problems,” he says. “Fuck. Look at you. You manage just fine.”

Jehan rolls his eyes. “My demons have always taken a very different shape than yours,” he says. “We’re talking peas and carrots now—always paired together, but never the same.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “You’ve pulled yourself together—even since a year ago, and I’m just getting worse. In the last month, I drank nearly twice what I was averaging before school started.”

Jehan takes a deep breath and pauses before he speaks. He wants to phrase this right. He doesn’t want this to sound like a judgment. “R, I don’t mean this to sound like a criticism or like I’m pressuring you or anything, because I’m not, you know that—but if you’re this bothered by your drinking, have you ever thought about cutting back?”

“I can’t give it up,” Grantaire says. “The last time I tried, my hands couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t paint.”

“I’m not saying you should quit,” Jehan says, because he knows asking  R to give up painting so he could quit drinking would be like asking someone else to give up breathing so they could stop aging. He doesn’t have the right to ask that of him, nor does he think it would help. Painting has always been therapeutic for R, just as poetry has always been therapeutic for him. “But what if we cut back. What if we cut out the narcotics and stop self-medicating. Social drinking is okay, but self-medicating isn’t. What if we cut that all out?”

“We?”

Jehan smiles. “I’d be with you every step of the way,” he says. It wouldn’t be quite the same because he’s not as dependent on self-medicating as Grantaire is and the idea of sitting through an anxiety attack without a joint to take the edge off terrifies him, but he’ll do it. “Besides,” he adds, trying to lighten the mood a little, “Mont mentioned the other night that I’ve been putting on some weight, so I figure I’ve either got to cut back on the empty beer calories or take up cocaine to drop a few pounds, and this is probably healthier for me in the long run.”

“You’d do that for me.”

It’s not quite a statement, but it’s not a question either.

“Of course, I would.” He knows Grantaire would do the very same for him. “Tomorrow we can sort out all the details, but today I just want you to relax with me, okay? Today, we’ll just be Grantaire and Jehan and we’ll just cuddle on your bed and watch bad movies on Netflix and all the problems and logistics can wait till tomorrow, okay?”

Grantaire nods and, in a rare show of sober affection, he tugs Jehan down next to him and wraps his arm around Jehan’s shoulders. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Jehan smiles and snuggles in close to Grantaire. He wonders if Grantaire will ever realize that Jehan thinks the same thing about him almost every day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all have a safe and happy New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. 
> 
> For anyone who's curious, the song that inspires Jehan's arm-doodle is "Holding Onto You" by twenty one pilots. I seriously love that song--and the band, for that matter.
> 
> Next chapter will be posted on Friday :)


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac has some much-needed heart-to-hearts

Saturday night after leaving Grantaire’s party, Courfeyrac just goes home with Enjolras instead of returning to his own apartment. He doesn’t really want to be alone right now and he knows that someone should talk to Enjolras about what happened at the party. So he does.

And he’s not surprised by what Enjolras says. After all, Courfeyrac knows what Enj’s home life was like—an emotionally distant father and a perpetually drunk mother who was more concerned with finding an escape through chemicals than tending to her son’s needs. He understands why Enjolras is bothered by Grantaire’s drinking.

After Enjolras says what he needs to say and Courfeyrac gently reminds him that lecturing people—or shouting at them, as the case may be—about life choices at their birthday party isn’t always the best option, Enjolras retreats to his bedroom and Courfeyrac crashes on the couch in the living room. He tosses and turns before he falls asleep and he can’t seem to get the images of Jehan and his boyfriend out of his mind.

By the time Combeferre comes in, Courfeyrac is finally drifting off. He’s vaguely aware of Combeferre getting a blanket for him out of the hall closet and making sure his shoes are off, but that’s it.

In the morning, he wakes to the smell of coffee and eggs and he smiles because Combeferre must be making breakfast. (It’s certainly not Enjolras, who has trouble making anything more complicated than toast without ruining it.) He wraps the blanket around his shoulder and shuffles into the kitchen. Sure enough. Ferre is at the stove, flipping an omelet. Courfeyrac takes a seat on a bar stool at the counter.

“Any chance there’s enough of that for me?” he asks.

Combeferre smiles and pulls a dish towel off a plate that was sitting next to the stove. He slides the plate (and more importantly the omelet on top of it) across the counter to Courfeyrac. “Would you like coffee or orange juice with that?”

“Some OJ, if you please,” he says and he grins when Combeferre obliges. Around a (sensational and down-right divine) bite of omelet, he says, “Ferre, I know you’re straight and everything, but I swear if you weren’t, I’d totally jump your bones just so we could spend the morning after like this every day.”

Combeferre just laughs, which Courfeyrac loves because when they first met that sort of comment would have made Ferre clam right up. “You know you can crash here without the sex,” he says. “I assume that’s what you did last night.”

“Yeah, but really good sex would make the whole situation perfect.”

“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to look elsewhere for that.”

“Next time I do the whole relationship bit,” he says, “what are the odds that I could get you to teach my girlfriend-or-boyfriend to be how to cook like this?”

“Better than the odds of me having sex with you.”

Courfeyrac looks up from his omelet and gives Combeferre a look. “You’re awfully chipper this morning.”

Of course, Combeferre, like Enjolras, is a natural morning person, which is part of the reason why they make such good roommates, but Courfeyrac roomed with Ferre their freshman year and he knows that Combeferre’s easy bantering and sly smiles are not a normal part of Combeferre’s mornings.

“I suppose I might be.”

There. Right there. He can see the spark in Combeferre’s eyes. “Out with it,” he says. “Did you get laid last night?”

“Nothing so sudden,” Combeferre says.

“But?”

“But I do have a date this Friday.”

“Ha! With Eponine?”

Combeferre nods.

“Combeferre, you sly dog! Do you have plans already? I know a great Italian place you can take her to. They do half-priced desserts on weekends, and their gelato—hell, just go for the gelato. You don’t even have to have a date to enjoy that stuff.”

He tries to ignore the fact that he would love to take Jehan to get gelato there. He tries to ignore all thoughts of Jehan period.

He fails spectacularly.

Combeferre, observational wonder that he is, notices. “What’s on your mind?”

He shakes his head and stabs his omelet with a fork.

“Is this about Jehan last night?”

“You know, my life would be a lot easier if you weren’t so damned perceptive.”

Combeferre shrugs. “It’s not exactly a secret that you like Jehan. Even Enjolras has noticed.”

Courfeyrac groans and rests his forehead against the counter top. “I don’t want it to be obvious. I’m trying not to scare him off.”

Combeferre doesn’t say anything but Courfeyrac can feel his friend’s gaze on him.

“Spit it out, Ferre. Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

“If you’re trying not to scare him off, Courf, you’re doing a remarkably poor job of it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that he has a boyfriend—one he talks about _all_ the time and one he clearly cares about—and you still insist on flirting with him every time you two talk.”

Courfeyrac looks up. “I flirt with everyone, Ferre. Hell, I flirted with you not five minutes ago. I practically propositioned you. It’s just how I talk.”

“It’s different with us than it is with him.”

He rakes his hand through his hair, which he’s sure is a disaster because curly hair is always a disaster in the morning. “Care to enlighten me?”

“When you flirt with me or our other friends, we know you don’t really mean anything by it. Half of us are straight and we all understand that your flirtatious little remarks aren’t meant as anything more than flattery. It’s part of your way of showing that you care. We get that. Enjolras even let you sit on his lap that one time—”

“I was drunk for that.”

“But he wasn’t,” he says. “But he knew what you were trying to communicate by sitting on his lap, so he didn’t fight you. Much. And even with Joly and Bossuet and Chetta—to an outsider, it looks like you flirt with them because you’re interested in them, but I know none of them feel threatened when you flirt with them. They know you and they know that you respect their relationship and wouldn’t ever dream of doing anything to hurt that. They know that you’re not actually interested in them.”

“What are you trying to say, Ferre?”

“I’m saying that Jehan doesn’t have that assurance because when you flirt with him, you _are_ interested. I know you keep saying that you just want to get to know him, but I know you, Courf. I can tell when you’re flirting to flirt and when you’re flirting because you’re legitimately interested. And you might pretend that flirting with Jehan is just you treating him like a friend, but I think you know that’s not the case and I think he knows that’s not the case. Every time you talk to him, he probably feels like you’re threatening his relationship with his boyfriend.”

“Is it so wrong for me to be interested in someone?”

“No, Courf, it’s not wrong at all to like people, but you’re crossing boundaries with Jehan, and I have to wonder…”

“Wonder what?”

“Wonder if you keep flirting with Jehan—keep making excuses to work with him on ABC projects or sit with him during meetings—because you’re actually interested or if you’re just annoyed that you can’t have someone you want.”

He feels sick. “What? No—I’m not—no. How could you think I’d do something so shallow?”

Combeferre sighs. “It’s not that I think you’re doing any of this deliberately—”

“Oh, so only my subconscious is shallow? Thanks a lot, Ferre.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, Courf.”

“I’m glad it only took us four years before the truth of how you really think about me came out,” he says, viciously stabbing his omelet.

Combeferre actually rolls his eyes at him. “I’ve never sugar-coated things for you before, and I’m not going to start doing it now. You’re one of my closest friends and I know you’d never do anything to deliberately hurt someone that you care about, but I think your emotions are clouding your judgment on this one. Luckily, I don’t think you’ve done any permanent damage, so just go talk to Jehan, all right? You can work this out with him.”

“I’m not just some shallow cad, okay?”

“I know you’re not,” Combeferre says gently. “But even the great Courfeyrac can’t be perfect all the time. If you want a chance at any sort of relationship with Jehan, you need to talk to him. Will you do that?”

Courfeyrac sighs. “Yeah, I’ll talk to him.”

“Good,” Combeferre says. “Now eat your omelet.”

* * *

 

Combeferre’s suggestion to talk to Jehan is a solid idea, it really is. But instead of talking to Jehan when they see each other at the Musain on Monday morning, Courfeyrac leaves the café before even ordering a drink. On Tuesday during the ABC meeting, Courfeyrac abandons his usual seat near Jehan and instead wedges himself on a bench between Joly and Bossuet, both of whom give him a concerned look but neither protest or question his presence. He spends most the meeting dodging the looks Combeferre gives him (thankfully these are few, because Combeferre is rather preoccupied with Eponine) and sneaking glances at Jehan, who looks tired and is without his usual smile.

Thanks to Courfeyrac’s shameless eavesdropping skills, he hears Jehan make an excuse to Enjolras before leaving the table and calling his boyfriend. He overhears Jehan say something about “Tuesday blues” on the phone, and within ten minutes, Montparnasse has arrived. Courfeyrac tells himself not to watch, but he does anyway and Montparnasse greets Jehan with a tender kiss and a hug before bundling the smaller man in his leather jacket and escorting him out of the café.

The small interaction shows a very different side of the couple than what Courfeyrac saw on Saturday night and he groans and rests his forehead on the table because now he feels worse.

Joly gives him a comforting pat on the head.

He doesn’t see Jehan at all on Wednesday and on Thursday morning when he sees Jehan—smiling once more as though everything were fine—again in the Musain to get a morning coffee, he smiles at the man, lifts his cardboard coffee cup in lieu of a proper greeting, and scurries out the door.

He’s halfway down the street when he hears Jehan calling his name, and he does the responsible adult thing and stops and waits for him.

“We need to talk,” Jehan says. He’s wearing an oversized sweater that brings out the green in his hazel eyes and it’s beautiful.

“How are you doing?” Courfeyrac asks. “You looked pretty down on Tuesday.”

“Normal fallout of doing ecstasy over the weekend,” he says. “Serotonin levels are pretty wiped out by midweek, but that’s not the point. You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I have not.”

“And now you’re lying to me. You used to not leave me alone and now this is the second time this week you’ve rushed out of the Musain before I can so much as say _good morning_ to you. I thought you wanted to be friends.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Courfeyrac says. “That’s part of the problem.”

“Well, running away from me isn’t going to help,” Jehan says. “Something’s bothering you, so out with it.”

“I didn’t know you could be so pushy.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Courf. There’s a lot I don’t know about you—but I know enough that I think it’d be nice to be friends with you, which is why I want to talk to you about whatever is going on because I don’t want this to fail because we weren’t willing to put in the work, okay? I take my friendships seriously. I take you seriously.”

“I don’t know how to just be friends with you, okay? I _like_ you. I’m attracted to you, and I can’t just turn that off.”

“Is this about Saturday?”

“This is about the fact that every time I look at you, I see your boyfriend with his hands all over you and it bothers me. All I could think Saturday night is that I wanted to be in Montparnasse’s position. I wanted to be the one who was making you feel that good. But I wasn’t and I can’t be, so yeah, I feel uncomfortable around you.”

“I’m sorry that you feel that way,” Jehan says. “And I’m sorry that you saw things that made uncomfortable, but I’m not going to apologize for enjoying myself on a night out with my boyfriend. I have been honest and upfront with you from the beginning. I am in a committed relationship and I love Mont and I’m fine with making new friends, but I am not looking for romance and I will not do anything that’s going to put my relationship in jeopardy. If you weren’t okay with that, you should have said so from the beginning.”

"I didn't know it would be this hard in the beginning!" He tries not to cringe after the words are out of his mouth because he's aware that he sounds like a petulant child who's having a choice gift withheld from him.

When did he get so pathetic?

“I really am sorry that your feelings got hurt, Courf, but Saturday night was the first time Mont and I have really been able to enjoy ourselves in a long while—and I won’t lie, you’ve been part of the problem. How do you think Mont feels when I’m always getting text messages from another guy? How do you think I feel having to reject your advances over and over again because you insist on flirting with me? You said you wanted to be friends, but to be honest, you’ve done a pretty lousy job of it!”

That makes him pause. Between this and Combeferre's lecture from the other day, he's beginning to feel like scum. Maybe even worse than scum, because they're both right. His behavior has been kind of appalling and he's more than a little ashamed of himself for acting this way because it is shallow and it is caddy and hell, he's broken up with people before because they act this way. He sighs.

“You’re right,” Courfeyrac says. “I have been, and I’m really sorry about that. Honestly.”

“Oh,” Jehan says.

“Oh what?”

“I guess I didn’t really expect you to apologize.”

Courfeyrac smiles. “I may be a bad friend on occasion, but I always own up to my mistakes. So I’m sorry I’ve been a lousy friend, and I’m sorry that I’ve complicated things between you and your boyfriend. It was never my intention to make things harder for you. If you’re willing, I’d like to take another stab at this _friends_ thing.”

“I can’t have you texting me all the time,” Jehan says.

“I figured,” he says. “I can go back to texting Enj whenever I get bored, but he’s not going to be pleased about it.”

Jehan smiles a little. “If Enjolras gives you too much trouble, try texting Grantaire. I don’t think he has your number and it’s only fair that he gets spammed since he’s the one who gave you my number in the first place.”

“See, this is why we’re meant to be friends, Prouvaire. And look, I'll try to cut back on the flirting and crap, but I've sort of got this problem where I flirt with everyone—”

“I hadn't noticed,” Jehan says dryly.

“So I need you to tell me if I'm crossing lines, okay?”

“I can do that,” Jehan says. “I'm glad we talked about this.”

“You think we can make it work?”

“I think it's worth the effort of trying,” he says.

Courfeyrac smiles. “This, I think, is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all had a wonderful New Year and all that and thanks so much for your comments and kudos and support. You're all awesome.
> 
> Next chapter (date night with Eponine and Combeferre) will be up on Tuesday :)


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Eponine and Combeferre date night

Combeferre picks Eponine up promptly at seven on Friday night, which makes her smile because he does seem the type for whom punctuality is important. She usually doesn’t date guys who care about things like showing up on time. It’s a nice change that someone’s willing to make the effort.

She answers the door when he knocks. (Grantaire had wanted to be the one to answer the door when she first told him about the date. He said that he could look menacing and probably borrow a gun off Montparnasse so that Combeferre would understand what was coming for him if he crossed any lines with her. “Hell,” he’d said at the time, “I could probably convince Parnasse to lurk in the background and look scary. He’s good at that.” She told him in no uncertain terms that she could and would take care of herself and that if Grantaire tried to pull a stunt like that, she’d castrate him in his sleep. He laughed, but apparently received the message just fine, because he is nowhere to be seen.)

Combeferre stares at her for a moment—literally stares and doesn’t say a word—and she tugs at her clothes self-consciously. He told her earlier in the week to “wear something you can move in,” so she’d opted for stretchy skinny jeans and her favorite blouse (which is sexy without being skanky) and a pair of brightly colored flats.

“Hi,” she says, trying to break the awkward silence between them.

Combeferre seems to realize he’s staring and laughs a little. “Hi,” he says back. “You look amazing.”

She tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles. She does look amazing and she knows it. This outfit has never failed her before. “Thanks,” she says. “Shall we go?”

Combeferre takes her to some swank Italian restaurant—the sort place that lists prices without dollar signs to make them less intimidating. It’s also the sort of place she would _never_ come to on her own because the idea of spending nearly twenty bucks for a plate of pasta has her cringing. She’s a little heartened by the fact that Combeferre orders one of the more expensive items on the menu for himself, though it makes her wonder if he’s just accustomed to exorbitant restaurant prices and has no idea how much he’s being ripped off.

Still, she orders one of the least expensive meals on the menu and orders it in the “light” portion size, saving Combeferre a few more dollars. She figures Combeferre will think she’s watching her weight—which is bogus because she eats more than Grantaire does on most days and she never passes up a meal—and not realize that she’s trying to save him money.

The restaurant employs an accordion player, who wanders from table to table playing songs for couples. Most of them are riffs off Disney songs and she and Combeferre quickly fall into a competition to see who can identify the songs the fastest. She’s pretty confident that she’ll win handily, considering Jehan’s preoccupation with Disney on days when he’s feeling low, but Combeferre identifies nearly every song after just a few bars and he smirks at her while he does it.

“I never would have pegged you for a Disney aficionado,” she says.

“I spent most of my summers babysitting younger cousins,” he says. “And Disney was the only thing that they could agree to watch.  I can quote most Disney movies—especially 90s Disney movies—verbatim. I can also do _The Emperor’s New Groove_ , although so can Enjolras.”

“Enjolras?” she says. “Like ‘stick in the mud, won’t go to bed before I’m legally wed’ Enjolras?”

“We grew up in neighboring neighborhoods,” he says. “So whenever he wanted to get away from his place for a bit, mine was the logical destination—and over summers, that meant putting up with my cousins.”

She imagines that Combeferre grew up in a large house with an even bigger yard—plenty of land for his little cousins to run around on. She thinks back to her childhood of hitching rides in the back of Montparnasse’s pickup truck, which he drove from the time he was fourteen, and trying to learn skateboard tricks in the parking lot of her parents’ motel while boys made fun of her and told her she couldn’t. She remembers her childhood in greys and browns, but she imagines Combeferre’s in Technicolor.

“Tell me about where you grew up,” she says.

He does and she kind of loves the way he talks with his hands and the way his eyes glint behind his glasses.

He insists that they get dessert—“The only reason I came here is because Courf told me the gelato was amazing,” he admits, as though a little bashful of the fact that he asked Courfeyrac’s opinion at all—but he also insists that they get their dessert to go.

“We’re not done yet,” he says as they walk out to his car, gelato in hand. “And I want to get there before it gets too late.”

“Get where?” she asks.

He opens the car door for her. No one has ever done that before.

He grins at her. “It’s a secret. You’ll see when we get there.”

Combeferre drives them across the city with surprising ease. She’s impressed with his ability to navigate New York traffic without being reduced to a pile of swearing rage—which is what happens whenever she’s in the car with Grantaire or Montparnasse when they drive. He takes them through back streets into a pocket of the city that’s more residential than commercial and he parallel parks in front of a warehouse-ish looking building.

She ducks a little so she can read the sign outside the building through the window. “Laser tag?” She smiles.

Combeferre grins at her and ducks his head a little, like he’s embarrassed. “I know it might be a little juvenile—”

“Running around a maze with black light and dry ice and shooting laser guns at each other?” she says. “That’s not juvenile at all. It is, dare I say, bad ass.”

He laughs as he turns off the car. “I’m hoping that we’re here late enough to avoid the hordes of ten year olds that usually swarm this place.”

When they go in, they find that the place isn’t run over by ten year olds, but there is a group of surly fourteen year olds, who make loud and obnoxious comments about the “hot chick” and the “nerd with glasses” as she and Combeferre register for the next game. She ignores them, having dealt with boys like this her whole life because this is the most common breed of teenager that her neighborhood produces. She chooses the name Starbuck for her codename and Combeferre, who looks over her shoulder as she types in her name even though she whacks him on the arm for it, chooses the name Apollo.

She laughs because it’s the perfect choice.

When they wait in the antechamber to get their gear, they hold hands and discuss how the first two seasons of _Battlestar Galactica_ were amazing, but the last two tapered off.

This, of course, encourages more talk from the fourteen year olds about what a nerd Combeferre is. Combeferre ignores them with saint-like patience. It’s not until one of them makes a comment about Eponine’s ass that Combeferre addresses the idiot teenagers.

“That’s it,” he mutters.

“Combeferre,” she says, “it’s fine. They’re just running their mouths.”

But Combeferre ignores her for the first the entire evening and turns around to address the teenagers.

“Look,” he says, his voice sounding harder than Eponine ever recalling, “say what you will about me, but leave the lady out of it.”           

The teenagers laugh and jostle each other with their elbows.

“Yeah?” one of them says. “What are you going to do about it?”

Combeferre adjusts his glasses. “I’m a pre-med student and I know at least a dozen ways to castrate you with medical equipment and probably a dozen more with things I can find in this building. If you want to keep what’s in your pants, you’ll stop talking about what’s in hers.”

He delivers the threat with such alarming calm that all the boys can do is swallow and nod at him.

Eponine bumps her shoulder against his when he turns back to her. “My hero,” she says with a little eye roll. “I can fend myself against a couple of idiot teenagers.”

“I know,” he says. The timer mounted above the door starts counting down for the doors to open. “But you shouldn’t have to.”

The timer ends and the doors open and the voice over the PA system announces that they have a minute to get themselves situated before the game begins. She and Combeferre head for the high ground, where they have a good view of the course. Another timer counts them down for the game to start.

Combeferre leans in close to her and whispers in her ear. “Your mission,” he says, “is to waste more teenagers than I do.”

“Done,” she says.

“Oh, you think you can?”

She turns to smile at him. “You have no idea what I’m about to unleash.”

When the timer beeps, she rushes from their spot, giving a Xena warrior cry because she's feeling giddy and she doesn't have many opportunities to showcase that particular skill. She can hear Combeferre’s laughter follow after her.

In the end, she and Combeferre are evenly matched. He’s a better shot and has a steadier hand than she does, but she’s stealthier and quicker. He spends more of the game waiting for his gear to time back in after being shot, which allows her more time to make kills while he’s out of commission. Too many of her shots go wide. But when the game ends, she has two more kill shots to her name than he does, and she brags about it the whole ride home.

He parks his car outside her apartment and walks her up to the door.

“I had a lot of fun,” she says. In fact, she had more fun than she anticipated. She thought this night would be pleasurable, since Combeferre is a nice guy and would treat her right, but this surpassed her expectations entirely.

“I did too.”

“We should definitely do this again,” she says. She wonders if she wants to kiss him. She hadn’t planned on it. Most guys interpret a kiss to be a promise for something more, and she’s not sure she wants to commit to that.

Combeferre smiles at her. “I am at your disposal whenever you want me.”

She pulls her keys out of her purse and gives him a long look. She licks her lips. “You’re probably sick of Disney,” she says, “but we have Jehan’s entire DVD collection here, and he’s got a lot more than cartoons. Surprisingly. Do you want to come in and watch something?”

“I would love to,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed the fluff (because I normally don't do fluff--most of the time when i try it turns into...not fluff.) And for the record, no one can convince me that Combeferre would NOT be a Battlestar Galactica fan. Just saying.
> 
> Thanks so much for your comments and kudos and support :) I love hearing from you guys. You're pretty much the best.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Friday :)


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jehan gets an unsettling late-night phone call

Jehan hears his phone go off in his dreams before waking up enough to realize that his phone is actually ringing. He gropes for it in the dark, knocking over the glass of water on the nightstand as he does so, and after a few uncoordinated attempts, he manages to unlock the screen to answer the call.

“Hello?” He lays on his back with his eyes closed. He should still be sleeping.

“Jehan? Finally. I’ve called you a half dozen times.”

“Mont?” He flings his left arm across the bed to reach for his boyfriend, but sure enough Mont is gone. Jehan could have sworn he heard him come home before he drifted off to sleep. “Where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. His voice is urgent. Jehan would call it panicked if Mont were at all capable of panicking. “This is important, Jehan. I need you to listen to me.”

“What time is it?” he asks. “I’m tired, Mont. Can we talk in the morning?”

“Jehan? Jehan, bird, I need you to listen to me. I need you to stay awake.”

“M awake,” he says, rolling over on his side. He balances the phone against the side of his face so he doesn’t have to hold it.

“I need you to get out of the house.”

“What?”

“Jehan, you need to get out of bed and get out of the house, okay? Do you hear me?”

Sleep pulls at him. “I’ll leave in the morning,” he mumbles.

“Jehan!” Mont snaps, his voice harsh.

“What?” He sits up and groans because some part of his mind recognizes that Mont’s not going to let him go back to sleep until he’s done whatever Mont needs him to do.

“I’m in trouble,” he says, “and the house isn’t safe. I need you to get out. Babet’s on his way to pick you up. He’s going to take you over to Eponine and Grantaire’s place. Do you understand?”

It takes a moment for his sleep-fogged mind to make sense of what Mont said, but once he understands, he feels a rush of urgency. “You’re in trouble? What happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’ll be fine—”

“So you are hurt.”

“That’s not important right now, bird. I need you to take care of yourself. I need to make sure that you’re safe.”

Jehan turns on the lamp next to the bed and gets to his feet. “I’m up,” he says. Mont says he needs to leave. He’s going to need clothes, shoes. Fuck. Where are his shoes?

“Good,” Mont says. “You’re doing great, bird. Go to your closet and on the top shelf you’ll find a blue duffel bag. There’s enough clothes in there to get you by for a couple of days.”

“You’ve prepared for this,” he says. Of course Mont has prepared for this. He’s no boy scout, but he’s always prepared. He finds the bag and he swears when he pulls it down, accidentally knocking down a shoe box on his head.

“I always have a back-up plan,” Mont says. “Are you at the closet? Did you find the bag?”

“I’ve got the bag.”

“Good. You’re doing so good, babe.”

“Mont, where are you? What’s going on?”

“You’re going to need to take your laptop,” he says. “And your school bag—”

“Please tell me what’s going on.”

“—I want you to grab anything that has your name on it—school papers, credit card bills, whatever—and take it with you, okay?”

He stumbles out into the living room, his movements still uncoordinated with sleep. He still needs shoes. Fuck it. Where are his damn shoes? “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Where are you in the apartment?” Mont asks. “Babet’s going to be there soon.”

“I’m in the kitchen,” he says. He braces the phone between his shoulder and the side of his head as he rummages through a drawer for any old bills that have his name on them. “Are you running from the police? Or is this another gang?”

“It’s gonna be a couple days before you come back home,” Mont says. “There’s some spare cash in the bag so you can buy a new toothbrush and shit, so don’t worry about grabbing any of that. You’ll want your poetry notebook.”

He will want his poetry notebook, but it seems to have run off with his shoes. “I want to see you,” he says. “I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“It’s not safe. Babet’s taking you straight to Eponine and Grantaire’s.”

“Why couldn’t you come get me?”

“It’s not safe,” Montparnasse says again.

He finds a pair of shoes near the door and his poetry notebook had somehow got kicked under the couch. He stuffs it in his school bag with his laptop. “Mont—”

“Everything is going to be okay, bird,” he says. “Do you have everything?”

“Yes, but Mont, please, I need—”

“You’ll see me soon,” he promises. “I’ll be okay, but I need you to stay safe, okay? Don’t try to call me or contact me at all until I contact you first. I’ll call or come find you in person. Don’t trust text messages from my number.”

“Mont, please—”

“And don’t come back to the apartment until I’ve told you it’s okay—not even to get extra clothes or anything you left behind. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but I—”

“I want you to go outside now. Babet should be waiting for you.”

“I love you,” Jehan says, his hand on the door knob.

“I love you, too, bird. Stay safe for me. I’ll find you when this is over.”

The line goes dead.

Like Mont promised, Babet is waiting in his beat-up old car outside his apartment. He doesn’t say anything to Jehan, even though Jehan asks him how he got that blood all over his shirt. He’s terrified that it’s Mont’s. Babet looks frazzled and it shows in his driving. Jehan thinks that if Mont really wants him to stay safe, he should have sent one of his other friends to get him, because he’s honestly surprised that he makes it to Grantaire and Eponine’s place in one piece—and slightly more surprised that he makes it without throwing up because his stomach has been churning since he got off the phone with Mont, and Babet’s driving certainly doesn’t help.

When he gets to the door, he sighs because the spare key isn’t in its usual place. He may have forgotten to put it back when he came to see Grantaire on Sunday—was that only this past Sunday? Less than a week ago, but it feels like ages—or maybe R or Eponine needed to use it. Either way, he’s stuck outside their door, trying to knock hard enough to wake one of them up, but not so hard that he’ll disturb their neighbors.

He’s debating whether sleeping on the floor in the hall is an option and maybe considering bothering Marius, who lives just across the hall, when the door opens.

He takes a step back because he’s surprised to find Combeferre at the door—armed with a rolling pin, no less—instead of Eponine or Grantaire.

“Jehan?” Combeferre asks. He seems just as surprised to see Jehan as Jehan is to see him. His grip on the rolling pin wilts.          

“If someone were trying to break into the apartment, they wouldn’t knock,” he says. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Combeferre says. He steps aside to let him in and once he’s inside, Combeferre’s presence makes a lot more sense because Eponine is sitting on the couch blinking at the both of them like she just woke up and he remembers R mentioning that they had a date tonight.

It appears the date went well. Their clothes and their hair are rumpled, though Jehan suspects that’s more to do with the fact that they had apparently fallen asleep on the couch together than anything else.

“What’s going on?” Eponine asks. She rubs her hand over her face. “You have a bag. Did you and Montparnasse fight?”

He shakes his head and Combeferre ushers him into the apartment. Jehan’s grateful for Combeferre’s comforting hand on his arm because now that he’s been welcomed in, all the fear and anxiety of the last half hour start to well up.

“It’s nothing like that,” he says. He speaks quietly because somewhere in the apartment, Grantaire is asleep. At least, he hopes Grantaire is here and asleep and not passed out in a bar or an alley somewhere. He shoves the thought away because imagining that R isn’t safe on top of knowing that Mont isn’t will kill him. “Mont’s in trouble. He needed me to clear out of the apartment.”

Eponine frowns. “Do you know what happened?”

“What kind of trouble could he have gotten into that would require you to evacuate your apartment?” Combeferre asks. Still, he takes Jehan’s duffel and school bag and steers Jehan towards the couch.

Eponine scoots over to make room for him and he flops against the couch.

“I don’t know what happened,” he says. “He called and said there was trouble and I need to get out of the apartment. Can I stay here for a few days? I don’t know when this is all going to blow over.”

“You’re always welcome here,” she says. “You know that.”

He nods. He tries to drag his hand through his hair, but it gets tangled and he swears quietly as he tries to finger-comb through the mess.

“Let me,” Eponine says.

He sits in silence as Eponine teases out the tangles with her fingers. He leans into the touch because he needs someone to touch him right now. He needs to not be alone in this. Once she’s done combing out his hair, she braids it and ties it off with the hairtie from around her wrist. She kisses the back of his head.

“I’ll go make sure the spare room is ready,” she says.

“I’m not tired,” he says. “I’d rather stay out here and watch the news, if it’s all the same.”

It’s the middle of the night and he doubts that there’s any sort of news playing right now. He’s practically an insomniac when he gets anxious and he spent most of his nights in high school staying up late watching informercials because he couldn’t sleep. He knows what’ll be on the TV right now. But if there’s big news—if Mont got himself into enough trouble to attract the police and the media—he knows that someone will be covering it.

He’s desperate for any sort of news about what’s really happening.

Eponine hands him the remote and gets to her feet. “Combeferre will sit with you,” she says. She gives the other man a look that suggests he better move to the couch now or there will be trouble—which Jehan appreciates because he _really_ doesn’t want to be left alone and maybe if he looks pathetic enough Combeferre will let him rest his head against his shoulder. “And I’m going to make you some tea, okay? We’ll get through this together.”

He offers her the best smile he can manage. “Thanks, Ponine,” he says.

Combeferre takes a seat next to him on the couch and doesn’t complain when Jehan leans into him after he turns on the TV and starts flipping through channels trying to find anything that resembles news. When Eponine returns with tea, Combeferre takes over the channel flipping and Jehan accepts the cup and Eponine takes a seat on the other side of him. They spend the night wedged on the couch together, waiting for whatever news will come with the rising sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and for your comments, kudos, and support <3
> 
> The next chapter will be up on Tuesday :)


	19. Chapter Nineteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad news comes in pairs

“So what you’re saying,” Courfeyrac says to Jehan on Monday morning as they share a coffee-and-scones breakfast together, “is that your boyfriend calls you in the middle of the night, tells you to clear out, and he _still_ hasn’t gotten back to you?”

Jehan tears his scone with long fingers and Courfeyrac notices that he doesn’t eat any of the pieces. “He said it might be a while for this to all blow over. He’s trying to keep me safe.”

Courfeyrac purses his lips. He thinks this is all nuts. Combeferre heard from Eponine and then word slowly got around to the rest of them that Montparnasse’s business endeavors aren’t exactly legal—which should have surprised absolutely no one—and not for the first time, Courfeyrac wonders how he and Jehan ever became a couple.

He wants to point out to Jehan that maybe he shouldn’t have a boyfriend who needs to keep him safe, but he refrains.

“Just seems a little inconsiderate to me,” he says.

Jehan shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess I always knew something like this might happen.” He looks up and Courfeyrac must have a look on his face because Jehan says, “Don’t look at me like that. My relationship is my own business.”

“I’m not judging,” he says. Jehan gives him a look. “Okay, maybe I’m judging a little. I just think it’s rude for him to leave you hanging like this.”

“I just wish I knew what was going on, you know?” he says. “I don’t mind being apart—okay, I mind a little. I miss him—but what bothers me the most is that I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know if he’s hurt or if he’s found some place safe to lie low. It worries me.”

“I’m sorry that you’re worried,” Courfeyrac says. “I really am. I can help you comb through newspapers and news stations to look out for news if you want.”

“Who told you I’ve been obsessing over news?”

“Grantaire,” Courfeyrac says. “He’s my go-to source for all Jehan-related news.” Courfeyrac checks the time. “C’mon. It’s going on nine and we both have class. I’ll walk you up to campus and you can tell me all about the rest of your relationship woes.”

Jehan rolls his eyes at him but he gathers up all his stuff anyway and shrugs into his coat.

“Don’t forget your coffee,” Courfeyrac says, nodding toward the paper cup that Jehan left on the table next to the torn remains of his scone. “You hardly touched it or your scone.”

“I’m not hungry,” he says.

Courfeyrac grabs Jehan’s coffee and thrusts it at him. “Well, this isn’t food,” he says, “and you need the calories. Take it.”

Jehan sighs and takes it and together they head out of the Musain and walk towards campus.

“Are you going to be able to make it to the meeting tonight?” Courfeyrac asks once they’re on campus.

“I thought we were taking the night off because the administration’s voting on the housing issue for transgender students tonight,” Jehan says.

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “Nope. Lamarque—Enjolras’s mentor, I don’t know if you’ve heard about him though I think Enj loves Lamarque almost as much as he loves justice—anyway, he’s on the board as part of the vote and he promised he’d call Enj as soon as the vote’s in. Enjolras is pretty optimistic about it, so I think he wants us all around to celebrate.”

“Enjolras wants to celebrate something?”

“Oh come on, he’s not that big of a stick in the mud,” he says. “He’ll probably even provide party hats and everything.”

“Meaning you’ll provide party hats and say they’re from him.”

“Do you think I could get R to bring some booze? We can say that’s from Enjolras too.”

“Oh, he’ll love that.”

Courfeyrac lingers outside the humanities building where Jehan’s first class is. “So should I expect to see you at the Musain tonight?”

“Well, unless Mont shows up—which I think is still doubtful at this point—I’ve got nothing else to do tonight.”

Coureyrac checks the urge to give Jehan a hug because he’s still trying to reign in his flirtatious behavior around Jehan and he doesn’t want to do anything out of line. It’s just that Jehan looks kind of miserable and looks like he could use some reassurance right now, so Courfeyrac claps him on the shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll all work out,” he says. “And in the meantime, we will happily provide a distraction for you.”

“Thanks,” Jehan says. “I’ve gotta get going, but I’ll see you tonight.”

Courfeyrac watches as Jehan heads to class. “Chin up, Flower Boy,” he hollers after his friend. “It’ll all work out.”

He tries to ignore the fluttering in his chest when Jehan looks back at him and smiles.

* * *

 

The Musain is crowded on Monday night and Les Amis had to carve out a niche for themselves in the back corner. Courfeyrac arrives late—not because he was out buying party hats, though he did seriously consider it—but because he was trying to finish up a last minute online quiz for one of his classes. When he forces his way to the table in the back, his friends welcome with a loud cry. He may not have gotten party hats, but it looks like Grantaire and Bahorel did provide drinks and spirits are high. Even Jehan, who sits wedged between Grantaire and Feuilly, is smiling and laughing, though his laughter doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Did Lamarque call already?” Courfeyrac asks. He steals a chair from a nearby table and wedges himself in between Combeferre and Enjolras at the head of the table.

“Not yet,” Combeferre says.

“Not that I’d be able to hear my phone when he does call,” Enjolras says. “Not with how loud it is in here.”

Courfeyrac laughs. “Yes, Enjolras, just give us a moment, and we’ll get everyone in the entire café to settle down so you can hear your phone call.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes at him.

“Relax,” Courfeyrac says. “There’s no way they’re not going to vote in favor of our housing proposal.”

Combeferre nods. “The proposal is well-written and well-researched,” he says. “And our petition and last week's rally show that we’ve got the support of the student body.”

“And you’ve got Lamarque in there arguing your case,” Courfeyrac adds. “I know he’s no silver-tongued god like yourself, but the man knows his stuff.”

“I’m not a silver-tongued anything,” Enjolras says.

“Whatever,” Courfeyrac says. “Grab yourself a beer and relax, okay? This is our night. We’ve worked hard. Let us enjoy the fruits of our labors!”

He reaches across the table and gabs a beer, twists off the cap, and hands it to Enjolras. He looks like he’s about to protest, so Courfeyrac ignores him and grabs two more beers for Combeferre and himself.

“C’mon,” Courfeyrac says, knocking the neck of his bottle against Enjolras’s. “Let’s not worry about plans and protests and petitions tonight. Tonight we’re just friends enjoying a night out together.”

“All right, all right,” Enjolras says. “You can stop nagging.” He smiles at them both before taking a swig of beer.

Now that he has Enjolras relaxed enough to drink a little, Courfeyrac embraces the good cheer that surrounds his friends. He loves moments like this, where everyone is relaxed and spirits are high and they can focus on being friends and just enjoy each other’s company. Bahorel tells bawdy jokes that make everyone groan and Joly tells an amusing story about a drunk nun from his internship at the hospital that makes Courf laugh so hard that he spews beer across the table. As the drinks go around, Chetta sits on Bossuet’s lap and Joly leans in against them. Bahorel lets Jehan do his hair in a dozen tiny braids while Grantaire and Feuilly argue about modern art. Courf enjoys the chance the chance to relax with Enjolras as they both watch Combeferre and Eponine trade glances and small touches.

Enjolras’s phone rings and he snatches it off the table. “It’s Lamarque,” he says, which gets the attention of the entire table.

They all wait while Enjolras answers the phone. Bahorel and Feuilly both reach for another drink, ready to celebrate as soon as Enjolras is off the phone.

But something’s not right. Courfeyrac can see it in the tense set of Enjolras’s jaw. Enjolras turns a little, not quite turning his back on the group but creating enough of a barrier to create some privacy. He stuffs a finger in his ear to dull the sounds of the rest of the Musain. Combeferre and Courfeyrac trade looks. This isn’t right.

A moment later, Enjolras turns back around. He looks shell shocked.

“Enj?” Courfeyrac asks.

“They said no,” Enjolras says.

“What?” Combeferre says.

“They said no,” Enjolras repeats. “They voted against the housing proposal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is so short. The response to the last chapter (nearly four times the amount of kudos as I normally get--seriously, you have no idea how flattered I feel!) was so impressive that I wish I had something more to give you all!
> 
> I can promise that the next chapter will be up on Friday, though! Again, thanks so much for all your support and encouragement. You're all wonderful :)


	20. Chapter Twenty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire and Enjolras have a chat...that doesn't end with them shouting at each other.

The entire table is silent for a moment and Enjolras sits back down like he’s suddenly boneless. Combeferre and Courfeyrac both look to Enjolras then exchange another look with each other. Grantaire has no idea what sort of nonverbal communication passes between them, but almost in unison they take action.

“We can appeal their decision,” Combeferre says.

Coufeyrac pulls out his laptop and opens it up. “We will appeal the crap out of their decision. It looks like their next meeting is in two weeks—”

“That gives us plenty of time,” Combeferre says. “It’ll take us a while to get clearance to hold a protest on campus. They’re not going to want to cooperate with us. We’ll have to fight for it—”

“Challenge accepted,” Courfeyrac says. He looks up across the table. “Joly, you’ve had good luck with the administration in the past. Let me know when you’ll have time to go in and talk to them with me.”

“We’ll need to talk Lamarque,” Combeferre says. “See what actually happened during the meeting, why they voted the proposal down.”

“We’ll start collecting signatures again,” Bahorel offers. And once Bahorel speaks, the rest of them start chiming in with ideas and suggestions and Combeferre and Courfeyrac take note of all of it.

The only one who’s not speaking is Enjolras, who sits at the table and stares like he’s lost or confused or something. His face is just…blank. Grantaire has never seen him like this, has never seen Enjolras at a loss for words and quite frankly it scares him. Well, okay, it also makes him want to hug Enjolras— _what doesn’t make you want to hug him?_ a treacherous voice in his mind adds—but mostly it makes him want to do something, anything to make this better for Enjolras, which is ridiculous because Grantaire’s probably the last person who should be comforting anyone.

Enjolras says something quietly to Combeferre and then gets to his feet and slips out of the café. Combeferre watches him leave but doesn’t move to follow him at all.

Grantaire stares at the door for a moment, waiting for Enjolras to come back in.

But he doesn’t.

“I’m gonna go check on him,” he says quietly to Jehan, who nods and doesn’t call any attention to him or what he’s about to do.

Good old Jehan. Always good for discretion.

He finds Enjolras sitting on the curb next to a parking meter.

“Hey,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets because it’s fucking freezing outside. He doesn’t know how Enjolras hasn’t frozen to death already because all he’s wearing is a thin red sweater. “You okay?”

“Go back inside with the others,” Enjolras says.

“Not unless you’re coming with me. It’s freezing out here. You know, I’m sure I can convince Joly to come out here and tell you all about how you’re putting yourself at risk for hypothermia and frostbite and a half dozen other things. I mean, hell, Enjolras, it’s _November_ —”

“I don’t need you to start an argument right now.”

Grantaire sighs and sits down on the curb next to Enjolras. The cement is freezing and he can feel it right through his jeans. “I’m not trying to start an argument and—shit, the ground is freezing,” he says. “We might be too late. Your ass might already have frostbite. You should really get that checked out.”

“Stop talking about my ass.”

“Only because you asked so nicely,” he says, and then he hesitates because the whole reason he came out here was to try to help Enjolras and why did he think that was a good idea again? He’s shit at making people feel better. All he can manage to do is stare at Enjolras—he’s always staring at Enjolras—and he notices the flat line of Enjolras’s mouth and the way his eyes seem shuttered. He frowns because Enjolras’s face is normally pretty expressive. Okay, so it’s not like Jehan’s because Jehan wears every emotion like he’s proud of it even if it’s a shitty emotion, but there’s always been something about Enjolras’s eyes that have always let Grantaire know exactly what he’s feeling.

Only now, it’s like he’s not feeling anything at all.

Ah.

“It’s okay to be upset that the proposal didn’t go through,” he says. “And maybe upset’s not the right word or the right emotion or whatever, but whatever you’re feeling you don’t have to lock it out. Especially not around them.” He jerks his head back toward the café. “This was important to you, we all know that. It’s natural to be upset.”

Enjolras pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m not upset.”

“Pissed? Annoyed? Filled with homicidal rage?”

“Grantaire—”

“You’re right, you probably wouldn’t be homicidal when you’re angry. Combeferre might, I could totally see that, but you…no, you’d probably commit arson in your rage. You’re an angry arsonist—”

“Will you stop? Being upset by this isn’t going to fix anything. Getting annoyed isn’t going to make this better. My emotions are just going to get in the way and screw this up even more—”

“Hold up,” Grantaire says. “Unless I’m very much mistaken—and I’m mistaken about a lot of shit, Enjolras, but I don’t think I’m mistaken about this—your emotions are what fuels you. You’re upset about everything pretty much all the time. That’s what makes you want to change it.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Okay, you’re bothered by things. You’re bothered by injustice. You’re bothered that a bunch of cisgender old white men won’t make easy and reasonable accommodations for the students at this school. You’re bothered that the police don’t care about that thing that’s going on with the prostitutes because they’re a bunch of pigs. You’re bothered that I’m an incurable alcoholic and that Jehan’s boyfriend is a criminal and that people look at Joly and Bossuet and Chetta and think they’re disgusting for what they have together. Let’s be real, here. You are _fueled_ by your emotions. If you weren’t—hell, if you weren’t, you’d be me. I’m the one who doesn’t care about anything.”

“Getting emotional isn’t going to solve anything,” he says. “Losing control isn’t going to fix this. Losing control is for the weak. I can't afford to be weak.”

“Whoa, okay there,” Grantaire says. He has enough issues of his own that he knows when he’s unwittingly stumbled into someone else’s. “Take it from someone who drowns everything he feels in alcohol, feeling things doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human, and god-like though you are, you’re still human. Well, I’m pretty sure you’re still just human. I'm not sure you sleep ever, so the jury’s still out on that account. But going off the assumption that you are human, you need to deal with whatever shit you’re feeling so c’mon. We’ll go back to my place. I’ll fix you up something to help you relax and then you can rant about the injustice in the world in the privacy of my apartment without worrying about looking weak. Hell, I’ll even turn my back to you if that’ll help.”

Enjolras looks at him. “I’m not letting you get me drunk.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, you’ve hit your one-beer limit. Give me some credit here, Enjolras. I was talking about making you comfort food.” He gets to his feet and holds his hand out to Enjolras. “I’m not taking _no_ for an answer and you’d be surprised at how much of a scene I can make out here. Come on.”

Enjolras stares at his hand for a moment. “Why are you doing this?” he asks. “Why are you being so nice to me? I know I was an ass to you at your party.”

Grantaire shrugs. “You look like you need a pick me up,” he says. “And I’ve been there enough times not to offer help when I can.”

Enjolras takes his hand and allows himself to be pulled to his feet.

Grantaire was fully prepared to walk to his apartment even though it’s a good twenty-five minute walk, but Enjolras rolls his eyes, mutters something about hypothermia, and hails them a cab. Once Grantaire’s fingers are warm enough, he sends a quick text to Jehan, letting him know that he and Enjolras have gone and to let the others know. The last thing he wants is for Combeferre to think he’s kidnapped Enjolras because Combeferre can be scary.

They get to his apartment within five minutes and Enjolras follows him upstairs.

“The place is a bit of a mess,” he says as he unlocks the door. He’s been working on an art project, so there’s a paint-stained sheet on the floor in the living room and the sink is filled with paintbrushes he left to soak. And Jehan’s been spending most nights out on the couch—Grantaire knows the poet well enough to know that he’s probably averaging only a few hours of sleep each night right now—so the couch is covered with his crap and there are old cups of tea sitting on the floor. Grantaire’s not entirely certain how Jehan gets away with it, because if he left that kind of mess in the living room, Eponine would shout at him—though Eponine’s been in an unnaturally good mood lately, so that might have something to do with it.

“It’s fine,” Enjolras says. He takes his shoes off by the door as though he doesn’t want to mess up their carpet and it makes Grantaire smile.

Grantaire heads straight to the kitchen and flings the cupboards open. “So, comfort food,” he says. “I’m extremely adept at making things that come out of boxes, so pick your poison and I’ll astonish you with my ability to follow basic instructions.”

“Whatever you want to cook is fine by me.”

Grantaire casts a look at him. “You’re about as shit as this ‘accepting comfort’ thing as I am at giving it, you realize that?”

“I didn’t ask you to do any of this.”

“No,” he says. “I offered, and if I hadn’t offered, you’d still be freezing your ass off on the curb because you mistakenly think you shouldn’t emote. Let me guess, Daddy Enjolras told you that only little girls cry?”

“Among other things, yes,” Enjolras says, his voice clipped.

“That one always seems to be a favorite,” Grantaire says. “Next to telling me what a worthless piece of shit I am, that was probably my old man’s favorite thing to say to me when I was seven. And I know Jehan’s dad has pulled that crap on him on more than one occasion—but I guess Jehan’s the only one of us smart enough not to listen.”

He grabs a box of mac and cheese out of the cupboard because he thinks there might be some hot dogs in the freezer and mac and cheese with hot dogs is what his mom made for him when he was upset when he was little.

When Enjolras doesn’t say anything, Grantaire keeps talking to fill the silence. “And it’s complete shit, you know that right? All that stoic I-Don’t-Feel-Anything crap. I know I make a joke of it all and I’m probably the last person on the planet that anyone should take emotional advice from, but seriously Jehan is probably the strongest guy I know if only because he’s not ashamed to feel things. And right now, you’ve got every right to feel things, you know? Just because you have a shitty old man—and trust me, I am president of the ‘I grew up with a shitty father’ club, so I know all the tricks yours could have pulled—doesn’t mean that you have to let that define you now. Because you should be upset. You worked hard and we had every reason to think that the proposal would pass and it didn’t because of some douche bags. The whole thing is shit.”

“There’s no reason why it shouldn’t have passed,” Enjolras says at last. “None.”

“Like I said, it’s shit.”

“It is.”

“Say it, Enjolras. Say that it’s shit.”

Enjolras looks at him.

“My apartment, my rules. Come on, say that it’s shit.”

“This is shit,” Enjolras says dryly.

Grantaire laughs.

“It’s frustrating, you know?” Enjolras says. “There is no logical reason why our proposal shouldn’t have passed—just a bunch of old men who are so afraid of change that they won’t open their eyes and see what’s going on. The world is changing and we’re trying to make a difference, trying to make this a better place to live in and they’re just screwing everyone over because they’re cowards. Heaven forbid that we try to make this school just a little bit nicer for the trans students here. It’s not like their lives aren’t hard enough as it is. It’s not like they don’t have twice as much courage to live their lives as those cowards who rejected our proposal and—you’re staring at me. Why are you staring at me?”

Grantaire drags his gaze away from Enjolras and stirs the macaroni noodles in the pot. “Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to stare.”

He can’t help but staring when Enjolras starts talking like that.

“Do I really sound like that much of an idiot? Come on, I know you don’t actually believe that we can change anything at all. Do I really sound that stupid?”

“You don’t sound stupid at all,” he says. “The opposite in fact.”

“What?”

Grantaire refuses to look at him and part of him demands that he shut his mouth right now, because he’s only going to dig himself in a hole, but the other part of him thinks that if anything he could say will make Enjolras feel a little better, it’ll probably be this. “You’re right that I don’t think anything will actually change in the long run,” he says with a shrug, “but if I had to bet between _your_ ability to change the world versus that world’s ability to stay the same, I’d put my money on you every time.”

Enjolras doesn’t say anything, which makes him nervous.

“So yeah, you can make the cynic hope,” he says. “That’s gotta count for something, right?”

He finally looks up from the pot and he sees Enjolras is watching him. He’s not staring, per se, but he’s watching like he’s piecing something together or realizing something for the first time. Frankly, it makes him feel damn uncomfortable.

“Thanks,” Enjolras says finally. “I needed to hear that.”

Grantaire nods and turns his attention back to the pot and tries to shake the sense that some part of their relationship has just shifted into something he doesn’t know how to predict.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday and thanks so much for reading, everyone :) Your support and kudos and comments mean so much to me.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday.


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac offers comfort

On Friday, Courfeyrac waits for Jehan outside of his last class. He had to bribe an old friend who works in the administration building to get access to Jehan’s schedule, but it all works out in the end. And yes, he knows it’s a little stalkerish, but tonight it’ll have been a week since Jehan’s boyfriend has disappeared and the stress of the situation is beginning to show. So between harassing the school administration to allow them to hold a protest and talking over the details of the housing vote with Enjolras and Combeferre, Courfeyrac has taken it upon himself to try to cheer Jehan up.

Because the poor soul could definitely use some cheer.

Even with all the drama about the housing vote, everyone’s worried about him. Grantaire confessed that Jehan’s barely sleeping and that he's having a hard time keeping food down, which he assured Courfeyrac is standard fare when Jehan’s anxious about something, but that does absolutely nothing to reassure Courfeyrac. Every time he sees Jehan, the younger man looks paler, more fragile, and Courfeyrac wants to punch Montparnasse in the face for putting Jehan through this at all.

Jehan deserves so much more.

Courfeyrac watches as the other students file out of the class once the bell rings, but Jehan isn’t among them. When he’s relatively certain that most of the other students are gone, he cracks the door open and looks inside. Jehan is at the front of the room talking with the professor.

“You wanted to talk to me?” Jehan says. His hair isn’t braided today, but it’s pulled back into a low ponytail. Everything from the tilt of Jehan’s head to the slump of his shoulders attests to exhaustion.

The professor leans back against the white board in the front of the room. “Your work has been suffering,” the man says. “And you’re not looking at all well. I’m concerned.”

Jehan shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been feeling a little under the weather—”

“If you’re sick, for goodness’ sake, take a day off,” the professor says. “Take the week off.”

“I just didn’t want to fall behind,” Jehan says.

“And I appreciate the effort. You’ve been one of my best students this term, Jehan, and I don’t want to see all that hard work go to waste because you don’t know how to take care of yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” Jehan says again. “I’ve just been a little stressed. I’ll try harder.”

The professor studies him for a moment. “Is everything okay at home?” he asks.

“What? Of course. That’s not why I’m stressed, it’s just—”

“It’s okay,” the professor says. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. I just wanted to be sure.”

“I’ll do better,” Jehan says.

“I’m sure you will,” the professor says. “But please, Jehan, let me know if things are too much. I’m willing to make accommodations for my students and the last thing I want is for you to make yourself sick worrying over my class, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Jehan says. “Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself,” the man says. “I’ll see you next class period.”

Courfeyrac steps back from the door just in time for Jehan to come bolting out of it. He nearly collides with Courfeyrac.

“You know,” Courfeyrac says, smiling, “you’re not the first person to throw themselves at me. Most of them aren’t as cute as you though.”

“Courfeyrac?”

“In the flesh.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to pick you up.”

“Pick me up for what?”

“We’re going out to lunch.”

Jehan shakes his head. “I’m not hungry,” he says.

“Doubtful,” Coufeyrac says. “I know you haven’t been eating, so I’m taking you to a little soup and salad place that I know and you’re going to eat something. At the rate you’re going, you’ll waste away by the end of next week.”

“Let me guess,” Jehan says dryly. “Grantaire ratted me out?”

“He’s worried,” Courfeyrac says. “We all are.”

Jehan grips his hands around the strap of his bag. “I’m sorry that you’re worried, but taking me out to eat’s not really going to help. It’s not like I’m not eating just to not eat. I can barely keep anything down and rushing for the toilet gets old after a while.”

He wraps one hand around Jehan’s elbow and steers him towards the nearest exit. “And I’ve taken that into consideration—hence the soup and salad place,” he says. “I’ll take you there when you’re feeling better because their mushroom bisque is the food of the gods, but they also have this really mild sort of chicken soup. Real easy on the stomach.”

“I don’t have a choice in this, do I?”

“Not at all,” Courfeyrac says with a smile. “You can either go to lunch with me now or I’ll let Joly and Combeferre go all pre-med on you at the meeting tonight. Trust me, I’m doing you a favor.”

Jehan sighs but allows himself to be ushered out of the building. The café isn’t too far from campus, but it’s cold and Courfeyrac doesn’t want to put any more stress on Jehan, so he calls a cab, which thankfully Jehan doesn’t protest. Once they’re at the café, Courfeyrac tells Jehan to grab them a table and he’ll place the orders and Jehan does protest this time because he insists that he can pay for his own meal. Courfeyrac deflects his protests with a smile.

“You’re not well,” he says. “And I’m trying to do something nice for you. Let me.”

Eventually Jehan sighs and seeks out a table for them. Courfeyrac joins him a few minutes later with a tray laden with soup.

“The chicken soup is yours,” he says, turning the tray just so for Jehan to grab his bowl. “And the tortilla soup is for me.”

“You really didn’t have to do any of this for me.”

“Honest, Jehan, I _like_ doing stuff like this. Makes me feel good about myself and all that. You’re my friend and your life kind of sucks right now, so I’m going to do silly extraneous things to bring you a little cheer and hopefully make things a bit better for you.”

“This isn’t silly,” Jehan says, dipping his spoon into the bowl.

Courfeyrac smiles at the way Jehan scoops his soup away from him, the way Courfeyrac’s mother tried to teach him when he was thirteen because apparently that’s the _polite_ way to eat soup. He watches Jehan take a bite and then another, just to make sure that he does at least eat something during the meal.

“How are you holding up?” he asks, turning his attention to his own soup.

“There’s been nothing in the news at all,” Jehan says. “I mean, there’s been news—I’m sure you’ve already heard from Enjolras about that woman who reported that her sister who’s a sex worker is missing but no one seems to care—but nothing that could be related to Mont at all, you know? Which is nice, sort of, because at least that means that whatever trouble he’s gotten himself into isn’t so bad that the media or the police are getting involved, but at the same time it’s terrifying. Do you know how under-reported gang-against-gang violence goes? Unless someone dies or gets arrested, it doesn’t get mentioned at all, so for all I know, Mont is—I don’t know—he’s been stabbed and has gotten some sort of infection and he’s dying in some abandoned warehouse somewhere.”

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that.”

“Oh yeah? You’re sure? Because I’m not sure of anything at this point. I just want to know that he’s okay. I know that he and I don’t have a perfect relationship but I do love him and he’s been there for me through a lot of shit. I’m not sure what I’d do without him and all I can think is that I’m never going to see him again, that he’s just going to disappear and I’ll never know what happened. It’s been a week, Courf, and I haven’t heard anything. I had kind of hoped that one of his friends would be decent enough to try to pass me word, but nothing.”

“I know you love him and everything, but as your friend, I do feel obligated to point out that it’s a total douche move to just leave you hanging like this.”

“He’s just trying to keep me safe,” Jehan says. “You don’t know the sort of people he could be tangled up with.”

“Still, he can’t pick up a pay phone and let you know he’s alive? I mean, he’s got to know you well enough to know that you don’t handle stuff like this well.”

“It’s not that I don’t handle it well,” Jehan says. “I just have an overactive imagination. It keeps me up at night. I really don’t know how Grantaire and Eponine put up with me.”

“They’re worried about you,” Courfeyrac says.            

“I don’t want people to worry about me. You all have enough on your plates without my stupid relationship issues making matters worse.”

“Too late,” Courfeyrac says. “Even Enjolras is worried about you—which is saying something, because he’s all-consumed with the protest about the housing vote, but he’s still worried.”

He doesn’t add that Enjolras has the same opinion of Montparnasse that Courfeyrac does. They both agree that the man’s a total asshole (his word, not Enjolras’s) for leaving Jehan like this and Courfeyrac is pretty sure that he could convince Bahorel to work Montparnasse over once all of this is done for being an inconsiderate excuse for a human being.

“Can we be done talking about me?” Jehan asks. “What about you? Other than ABC stuff, what do you have going on?”

“I’ve got a date tomorrow night,” he says. “I managed to convince Enjolras to switch tomorrow’s meeting to tonight so I could fit it in.”

“Oh yeah?” Jehan’s smiling a little. It’s a shadow of his usual smile, but it’s something. “Who’s the lucky man—or is it a lady?”

“It’s a lady,” he says. “I guess there’s some sort of girls’ choice thing happening on campus tonight and I guess she’s just another victim to my charms.”

“You don’t sound too excited about this.”

“I don’t think I’m really all that interested in her,” he says. “But she’s nice enough and we’ll have a good time and I know the kind of balls it takes to ask someone like me out—” That gets Jehan to laugh. “—and I figure it’s time I start playing the field again. I was hung up on this really amazing guy for a while, you see, but said guy already has a boyfriend, so I had to let that dream sail.”

“I bet it was a nice dream, though.”

“An amazing dream,” Courfeyrac says. “All moonlight and flower gardens. In fact, you’d probably really like the guy. You two have a lot in common.”

Jehan laughs a little again and continues to ask Courfeyrac about his plans for the weekend, as though he’s trying to have a conversation where he doesn’t have to think about his MIA boyfriend and can forget about his anxiety. Courfeyrac wishes he could do more than buy Jehan lunch and be a distraction, but he’s grateful for every bite Jehan takes and every smile that he can coax out of him.

He might not be able to solve the poet’s problems, but at the very least he can make them easier to bear for an hour or so.

Courfeyrac drops Jehan off at Grantaire’s apartment after lunch and they don’t see each other again until the meeting at the Musain that night—although Jehan does send Courfeyrac a sincere and elegant “thank you for the lunch” text, which Courfeyrac makes sure to save.

Courfeyrac is already at the Musain, having shown up early to discuss matters with Enjolras and Combeferre, when Jehan and Grantaire arrive. Their arrival is accompanied with a gust of cool air from the door and Courfeyrac notices that Jehan’s wearing Grantaire’s leather jacket. He wonders if Jehan is wearing it for comfort or if he just didn’t bring any winter-appropriate clothing when he had to flee his apartment last week.

The rest of their friends filter in over the next ten or fifteen minutes, and instead of loitering and chatting, which is how they normally start their meetings, they take a seat, ready to focus and stay on task. They’re still trying to finalize approval from campus administration to hold a protest the coming Wednesday about the vote on the housing issue. Administration has been yanking their chain—telling one of them one day that they have approval, but then when another one goes into the administration building the next day to fill out the necessary paper work, they’re told that their request was denied. Courfeyrac has spent _hours_ on the phone with various higher-ups trying to sort this mess out and eventually had to give up and hand the phone off to Combeferre because he can no longer talk to those bastards without swearing. Violently.

While Courfeyrac has been battling the administration with Combeferre and whoever else he can rope in, the others have been spreading the word and recruiting students to their cause. There are some students who’ll show up at the protest simply because protesting seems like the thing to do when you’re a college student, but he knows a lot of the people will turn up for the right reasons.

 Jehan is quiet through the meeting, and Courfeyrac catches himself watching Jehan when he should be paying attention to the matters at hand. He doesn’t know if Jehan actually looks worse than he did this afternoon or if it’s just some trick of the light, but he looks exhausted and hollowed out, like he doesn’t have anything left to give at this point. He notices, though, all the subtle ways Jehan seeks comfort from Grantaire—and the way Grantaire unconsciously gives it. The way Jehan seems to list toward Grantaire and the way Grantaire rubs Jehan’s back or combs his fingers through Jehan’s unbraided hair.

For as closed off as Grantaire can be—he wears his cynicism as a shield most often—Courfeyrac thinks he’s remarkably empathetic. Which is a good thing. It’s a great thing, especially if it means that Jehan has just one more person he can rely on and even more especially if something more comes from the mac and cheese date that Enjolras and Grantaire had—not that he calls it a date to Enjolras’s face, but he definitely classifies it as a date in his head—because even in the wake of everything that’s happened in the last week, Courfeyrac still has room enough in his heart to hope for good things to blossom between his friends.

After a while, they break into smaller groups to work on various preparations that need to be done for the protest. Enjolras takes care to make sure that Courfeyrac isn’t placed in the group in charge of wrangling the school administration, which Courfeyrac is grateful for because he really doesn’t have the emotional energy to fight that particular battle anymore. He ends up in the same group as Bahorel and Grantaire—and with Jehan, who by default has attached himself to whatever group Grantaire is in for the moment, though Jehan watches and listens more than he participates. They’re working on fliers that they can distribute around campus and the bars and cafes that attract students and Courfeyrac is bent over a flier template, debating semantics with Bahorel, when he hears a sharp intake of breath from across the table. He looks up to see Jehan, whose face has gone completely white.  He grips Grantaire’s wrist so tightly that it looks painful.

“Jehan?” he asks softly.

But Jehan’s not even looking at him. His eyes are fixed solely on the window and he looks like he’s seen a ghost.

Courfeyrac turns around in his seat and sees Montparnasse on the other side of the window. For a minute, no one moves. Montparnasse, as though sensing that Jehan is more or less frozen for the time being, moves to the door and comes into the Musain. In the light, Courfeyrac can see the nasty cut that he has across one cheek, which is puckered and red and healing.

As soon as Montparnasse is inside, Jehan seems to come back to life. He’s out of his seat and scrambling around the table and he practically flings himself at Montparnasse, effectively stealing the attention of everyone in the café. Montparnasse stumbles back when their bodies collide, but he wraps one arm around Jehan’s waist and pulls him close.

The reunion would be touching if Courfeyrac didn’t want to punch Montparnasse’s teeth in because how dare he abandon Jehan for a week just to show up now—with a great big bloody gash across his face no less—like nothing happened.

Jehan has his face buried against Montparnasse’s chest and when he pulls back, they kiss and Jehan’s fingers flutter over the mark on Montparnasse’s face. Courfeyrac thinks he knows Jehan well enough to suspect that Jehan looks at that injury and feels physical pain himself.

When Jehan pulls back again—he stares at Montparnasse like he’s seeing the sun for the first time in a month—they have a hushed conversation that Courfeyrac doesn’t even bother to try to hear. Jehan glances back at the table as he speaks, as though trying to explain his presence here, but Montparnasse fists his hand in Jehan’s hair and claims his mouth again in a rough kiss, which Jehan seems to melt into.

Courfeyrac looks away.

A moment later, Jehan’s back at the table to gather up his coat and bag.

“I’m going to head out,” he says to Enjolras. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Courfeyrac can tell from the way that Enjolras glances at Montparnasse that he’s just as disapproving of this as Courfeyrac himself is, but Enjolras doesn’t protest.

“Of course not, Jehan,” he says. “Enjoy yourself, okay?”

Jehan positively beams at him—Courfeyrac hasn’t seen him this happy all week—and presses a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks for everything,” he says. His eyes flicker towards Courfeyrac, as though offering him a more specific thank you. But then he smiles once more and he’s running back to Montparnasse’s arms, leaving them all behind.

Hours later, after most of his friends have cleared out and the manager comes to tell Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras that they need to pack up and leave because they’re closing for the night, Courfeyrac slumps back in his chair and says, “I don’t like him.”

Combeferre looks up at him. “The manager? You’ve always gotten on well with him.”

“No,” he says. “Montparnasse. I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.”

Enjolras makes a sort of humming noise that Courfeyrac takes as a sign of agreement.

“Jehan seemed happy enough to see him,” Combeferre says. “Though he should probably get that cut on his cheek looked at. I’m surprised that Joly didn’t insist on it before they left.”

“Of course Jehan was happy to see him,” Courfeyrac says. “He’s been missing for nearly an entire week—and let’s be frank, that’s just messed up. What kind of person in a committed relationship just up and leaves like that? Especially without bothering to keep in touch. You’ve seen how anxious Jehan has been this whole week. His boyfriend—who’s supposed to love him—did that to him. It’s messed up, and I don’t like it.”

“Courf,” Combeferre says gently, and he can hear the beginning of an _I don’t think you’re the most impartial judge in this situation_ speech, but Enjolras interrupts him.

“No,” he says. “I agree with Courf on this one. I don’t think like Montparnasse and quite frankly, I don’t want him around me or any of my friends. Grantaire’s told me that he and Jehan are pretty good for each other, but I don’t believe it. I haven’t seen anything good come of that.”

Combeferre sighs. “Regardless of how you two feel,” he says, “it’s not really appropriate for any of us to intervene. Jehan’s happy with him—and yes, it might not be the healthiest relationship, but Jehan _is_ happy. That should be our first concern.”

Courfeyrac looks to Enjolras and hopes that his friend will refute Combeferre, that he’ll say the very last thing they should be doing is letting that relationship run its course because it won’t lead anywhere good, because he knows if Enjolras says that than this isn’t all in his head and he’s not being paranoid because he still has feelings for Jehan.

But Enjolras says, “You’re right. Jehan is happy and he knows what he’s doing. We can keep an eye on him, but we shouldn’t get ourselves involved.”

He looks right at Courfeyrac as he says this last bit and Courfeyrac sighs.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll stay out of the way. But I’m not gonna be happy about it.”

Enjolras just claps him on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t expect you to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all SO much for all you kudos and comments and support. You guys never cease to make my day :)
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Friday! Thanks for reading :)


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan has a weekend in with Montparnasse and Gueulemer is an ass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for some homophobic and sexist language in this chapter

Jehan spends the weekend locked up in his apartment with Montparnasse. Neither of them bothers wearing anything more than underwear (and socks because the kitchen floor is cold) the whole time, and for the most part, they don’t leave the bedroom. Montparnasse insists that they eat regular meals and Jehan suspects that’s only because he’s lost enough weight in the last week that Montparnasse can count each of his ribs. So when they do venture out of the bedroom, it’s usually to the kitchen and Jehan burns more than one meal because Montparnasse can’t keep his hands off him and in the middle of cooking, Mont will start rutting against him and letting his hands wander to every single erogenous zone on Jehan’s body.O

It makes him feel alive. So wonderfully, deliriously alive.

Jehan doesn’t ask about what happened or where Mont’s been this whole time. The cut on his face provides all the details he needs. And besides, Mont is here now. He’s safe now. Fretting over what has already happened is no good for either of them.

Both times they shower over the weekend, they shower together, and they’re usually in there so long that the once-hot water runs cold over their bodies and Mont bundles Jehan up in towel before taking him back to the bed to warm him up properly.

It’s the best weekend Jehan can remember having in a long time—so much so that he emails his professors and tells them he’s ill and that he won’t be making it to class on Monday.

By Monday evening, things have settled and Jehan can look at Mont without wanting to touch every inch of him. He feels a little shaky when Mont leaves to go run some simple errands—most of their perishables in the apartment have gone bad in their absence and they’re in desperate need of milk and more lubricant—but he tells himself that it’s just his nerves and Mont promises to text him when he gets to the store and again when he’s headed back home so that Jehan won’t have to worry.

To keep himself occupied, Jehan searches their cupboards, looking for something that he can make for dinner. They’re out of any one kind of pasta to make any reasonable sort of dish, but they have enough short noodles that Jehan thinks it would be fine if he served them together with hamburger stroganoff. It’s only by luck that they have everything else he needs for the meal.

He flips through channels on the TV and thankfully _Mean Girls_ is playing because it’s a movie he’s familiar with that he doesn’t feel the need to pay much attention to it while he cooks. It’s mostly on for background noise.

When he’s finished browning the meat, Mont texts to say that he’s at the store and once the water is boiling for the pasta, he says that he’s on his way back.

Jehan doesn’t know what he’s deserved to have a boyfriend who’s so accommodating of his quirks.

Mont is home within ten minutes of the text and Jehan smiles at him when he walks in the door.

“What’re you cooking, babe?”

“Stroganoff,” he says.

Mont sets the bags of groceries down on the counter. “Put those away, will you? The guys are on their way up.”

“The guys?”

“Yeah. Your stroganoff makes enough for them, doesn’t it? And you can always whip up some more if it’s not.”

“I didn’t realize your friends were coming over,” Jehan says, frowning a little. “I’m not wearing any pants.” He's just wearing underwear and a sweater because it's cold in their apartment but pants seemed like too much trouble.

“Why aren’t you wearing pants? Not that I mind you not wearing pants, but I’d rather not give my friends a show.”

“I just thought it’d be just the two of us again tonight,” Jehan says. He tugs at the legs of his boxer-briefs, suddenly worried that they’re not doing an adequate job of covering him.

“It’s been just the two of us all weekend,” Mont says. “The guys and I have some work to do.”

“Right, I know,” Jehan says. “I guess I just thought you’d be taking things easy for a while. Lying low and all that.”

“Can’t afford to lie low,” he says. “Now unless you want Gueulemer knowing you wear lavender underwear, you should go get dressed. I’ll make sure the food doesn’t burn.”

Jehan slips past Mont so he can get back to the bedroom and he digs a pair of jeans out of the hamper. He shakes off the uneasy feeling his stomach because he’s just being petty and paranoid. He’s had Montparnasse to himself, uninterrupted, the entire weekend, and if Mont and his friends need to talk things over or work on things to keep themselves out of prison, than Jehan’s being a crap boyfriend by kicking up a fuss about it at all.

When he returns to the kitchen, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Babet have arrived and Gueulemer is cracking jokes about Mont slaving away in the kitchen.

“Ah, here’s the boy toy,” he says when Jehan comes out. “I suppose he can’t get pregnant, but at least he’s barefoot. Get him back in the kitchen where he belongs.”

“Shut your mouth, asshole,” Mont snaps, but Jehan just rolls his eyes. He’s used to this sort of sexist, homophobic drivel from Gueulemer. It’s not pleasant, no, but it’s all he can expect from a man who dropped out of high school when he was fifteen and thinks Keats is a kind of breakfast cereal, not a poet.

“I’ve got it from here,” Jehan says, taking the wooden spoon from Mont’s hand and giving the pasta a little stir. It’s almost done.

He drains the pasta, adds the sour cream to the stroganoff and puts away the groceries while the food simmers on the stove.

Gueulemer can’t stop running his mouth and Jehan begins to think that he’s drunk, which wouldn’t be a surprise, not really. He sighs a little to himself, because he’s fine with Babet and Claquesous. Neither of them bother him at all, but Gueulemer is hard enough to deal with when he’s sober, but he’s even worse when he’s drunk or high and he’s effectively ruining the good mood that Jehan has spent the weekend cultivating.

And maybe it’s petty of him, but he’s annoyed that Mont isn’t being more forceful with him.

“What kind of girly shit is this?” Gueulemer says as he flops down on the couch and gestures at the TV. “Is this the sort of faggy shit you and your boyfriend watch together, Parnasse? It’s all so… _pink_.”

“Jehan, turn this off, will you, babe?” Mont asks. “And when’s dinner gonna be ready? It smells amazing.”

“You like this movie,” Jehan says.

Gueulemer laughs. “You’re not going as queer as your boyfriend on us, are you?” he asks. “Just wait till word that you like movies about teenage girls hits the streets. No one’ll be able to take you seriously.”

“Gueulemer, if you don’t want my foot up your ass, you’ll shut your mouth,” Mont says. Jehan can hear the edge of irritation in his voice. “And Jehan, seriously, turn it off.”

Jehan rolls his eyes and reaches for the remote to turn off the TV. He turns off the stove and mixes the stroganoff in with the pasta, before dropping the still-hot skillet into the sink. Mont looks back at him.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asks.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “I think I’m going to skip out on dinner. I’m going to head out to the Musain.”

Mont frowns at him. “What’s at the Musain?”

“Coffee?” He’s pretty sure Les Amis are meeting tonight and he’d much rather spend the evening with them than here.

Mont walks around the counter that divides the living room from the kitchen and he turns his back to his friends, creating a shadow of privacy for him and Jehan. “Are you going around to dick around with those idiot activists I found you with the other night?”

“Those idiot activists are my friends,” he says coolly.

“Shit, Jehan, no need to get your balls in a twist.”

“I really don’t want to stay here and listen to Gueulemer run his mouth all night, all right?”

“You know he doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s had a couple beers. He’s not using his filter.”

“He never uses his filter,” Jehan says. “I’m going to the Musain. I’ll swing by R’s place after and grab the stuff I left there and I’ll just hang out there until this lot leaves.”

“Oh come on, Jehan, don’t be like this.”

“I’m not _being_ like anything.”

“You know what? Fine. If you want to get all pissy about this, then leave. I don’t care.”

Jehan rolls his eyes. “I’m not being pissy or unreasonable about this. You know how I feel about Gueulemer—”

“It’s always about your _feelings_ with you, isn’t it? You _feel_ uncomfortable with Gueulemer, you _feel_ scared when I leave the apartment, you _feel_ like shit when you talk to your dad—”

Jehan takes a step back from Mont. “You know what? I’m done with this tonight,” he says. “We can talk about this later when you’re not acting like such a jackass.”

He brushes past Montparnasse and he’s grateful that he’s got a pair of boots and the jacket he borrowed from Grantaire in the living room because going to the bedroom to get shoes and a coat before leaving would feel too much like retreating. He grabs the boots and the coat and doesn’t even bother putting them on before he leaves the apartment. He just wants to get out.

He shoves his feet into the boots and shrugs into the jacket on the stairwell and heads straight for the Musain. A meeting is already in full-swing by the time he shows up, and he’s greeted with a loud jovial cry from Bahorel, who spots him first, and an echoing cry from the rest of the group. He blushes and ducks his head as he smiles and he pretends that the warm welcome doesn’t make his eyes water because it's so very different from the atmosphere he just left. Joly scoots closer to Bossuet to make room for him and it feels almost like coming home when he takes a seat at the table. He takes a deep breath to compose himself and when he looks up, he smiles at Courfeyrac and Enjolras who are directly across the table from him.

“So,” he says. “What did I miss?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how at the end of each chapter I tell you all how wonderful you all are for your comments and kudos and support? Yeah, it's totally still true :) Thank you all sooooo much for reading. You're all the best.
> 
> And because you're the best, the next chapter will be up on Tuesday. (It's a long chapter, so be excited haha)


	23. Chapter Twenty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a protest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for some violence. (Also, spoiler alert, there's going to be some violence. I don't think it's gratuitous or anything, but I just thought I'd give you all a heads up.)

Grantaire shows up at the protest on Wednesday because Eponine and Jehan are going and he feels the need to watch over both of them—Eponine shouldn’t be going to something like this in the first place because she can’t afford any trouble with the law prior to the custody hearings for her siblings and Jehan is still looking a little too thin and a little too pale for Grantaire’s comfort. The fact that Enjolras smiles at him when they show up and claps him on the shoulder like they’re old friends is just an added bonus for attendance.

He’s surprised at the turn out. Prior to arriving, he was pretty sure that Enjolras’s little activist group would be the only ones in attendance, but he seems to have underestimated the power of Enjolras’s charisma, of Combeferre’s steady persuasion, of Courfeyrac’s warm charm. The quad outside the administration building on campus is packed. He recognizes more than a few students from the fine arts college and mostly everyone is just milling around and talking to each other. People have signs but they’re not hoisting them yet.

They hardly look like a protest, though. Mostly, it just looks like students waiting around for something to happen, which is something that most students have a natural knack for.

“This is a little anti-climactic,” he says to Jehan.

 Jehan links arms with him and leads them forward into the crowd, leaving Eponine behind to talk to Combeferre.

“It hasn’t really started yet,” Jehan says. “Courf told me that once Enjolras takes the stage, these things can get pretty frenzied.”

“He’s Courf now, is he? What does Montparnasse think about that?”

Jehan rolls his eyes. “I give everyone nicknames,” he says. “It’s completely ridiculous to expect me to call everyone by their obnoxiously French multi-syllabic last names—especially when you all have perfectly good first names that I could call you by.”

“My first name is not perfectly good,” he says. He shares his first name with his father—he shudders to think that technically someone could call him _Junior_ —but since his parents were never married, he has his mother’s last name. It’s that lineage that he prefers to cling to.

“You have a reasonable excuse,” Jehan says. He spots Joly huddled between Bossuet and Chetta and he waves before steering Grantaire over to them. “But the rest of them? Courf’s first name is Michel. That’s a perfectly normal name, but he refuses to let me call him by it.”

“Do you know Enjolras’s first name?”

Jehan smirks a little. “I was sworn to secrecy on that one. Besides, you have your own nickname for him.”

Their conversation is cut short when they join the others. Grantaire shoves his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. Maybe Joly brought handwarmers that he can use, but doesn’t want to ask because it’s best not to get Joly started on health risks.

“So when’s this party getting started?” Grantaire asks. “I’ve got a keg in the car if anyone wants to get drunk with me.” He jokes about drinking all the time, even though he is slowly trying to wean himself away from the bottle, as it were. He’s smart enough not to cut himself off cold, but that means he’s on a slow road to sobriety—one rife with the potential for failure—and he doesn’t want to call attention to what he’s trying to do.

“Oh, I wouldn’t get drunk,” Bahorel says, coming up behind them with Feuilly in tow. “These things can get kind of violent. You’ll want to stay sharp.”

“Violent?” Grantaire says. “What? Is someone going to knock me over the head with their cardstock sign?”

“The police have gotten involved before,” Chetta says. “Enjolras has a tendency to get…a little blunt when they’re around.”

“Blunt?” Bahorel says with laugh. “I’d have gone with _antagonistic_.”

“Don’t tell me Apollo has an arrest record,” Grantaire says, grinning. Enjolras is normally so straight-laced that the idea of him behind bars is down-right delightful.

“A colorful one,” Feuilly says.

“We should warn Eponine,” Jehan says. “The first hearing is at the end of this month. She can’t afford to have this on her record.”

Feuilly nods towards the raised dais that he and Bahorel and Courfeyrac spent the afternoon putting together. Grantaire can see Combeferre and Eponine at the front of the crowd. Combeferre’s got his arm around her shoulders. “I think Ferre’s got her covered,” he says.

They all exchange glances with one another because even though Combeferre plays close to the vest, it’s clear to all of them that he’s growing fonder of Eponine than any of them expected.

Jehan smiles. “I guess I won’t intervene, then.”

A moment later, Enjolras takes the stage with Courfeyrac and the energy in the air seems to crackle around them.

Courfeyrac helps a young woman on to the stage and smiles at her in that way that only Courfeyrac can manage—the sort of expression that’s encouraging and comforting all at the same time. When Enjolras starts to speak—he doesn’t use a megaphone or anything, of course he doesn’t use a megaphone—the people in the front start cheering at what he says and Grantaire can only make out bits and pieces. But he appears to be introducing the young woman as Robin, one of the trans students directly impacted by the current housing policy.

Grantaire catches Enjolras saying something about how she’s “brave enough to share her story” before the young woman is ushered forward. She doesn’t have the same commanding presence that Enjolras does or even the inviting charm that Courfeyrac has and she seems timid and frail up on the stage, though she seems to take comfort in the two men flanking her as she begins to tell her story.

It’s a heartbreaking little tale of a lifetime of discrimination and a constant search for some sort of harbor where she can relax and feel safe. She speaks with such soft-spoken sincerity that Grantaire thinks even his blackened heart might bleed for her.

Once she’s done—the end of her story is met with resounding applause and cheers from the growing crowd—Courfeyrac helps her off the stage and Enjolras takes the forefront again, raging against the injustice that the school administration is doing to her and to other students like her and the need for rational and compassionate students to rally together and work with them to get the housing policy changed.

Grantaire wishes he has his sketch book, because this is Enjolras at his most beautiful, his most powerful.

After a while, Enjolras’s voice grows hoarse and he takes a step back, letting Courfeyrac take point for a while. They have different speaking tactics. Where Enjolras is all idealism and human rights, Courfeyrac shares stories about people. He has a unique knack for making Enjolras’s broad ideals sound intensely personal. Together, it’s an unbeatable combination. They tag-team speak as the sun begins to set and the temperatures start to drop. It’s a testament to the power of their voices that even as it gets colder—Jehan huddles closer to Grantaire for warmth—more and more students gather around before they head home for the night.

Trouble doesn’t begin to stir until after the sun has set completely. Enjolras and Coufeyrac are still at their speech-making and Grantaire is so caught up in the power and compulsion of Enjolras’s voice that he doesn’t notice the arrival of the police.

It’s okay, though, because Feuilly does. “Oh look,” he says dryly, “it’s our friendly, neighborhood police force.”

“I believe the preferred time is _peace_ force,” Joly supplies.

“Oh yes,” Bahorel adds. “And the peace force has brought along their riot shields. For our safety, I’m sure.”

Grantaire manages to pull his eyes away from Enjolras (even though it’s painful because he could really stare at the man all day and never get sick of it and does that make him a stalker? He’s not sure he cares) and cranes his neck to see the police officers gathered around them. He’s had plenty of experiences with the police—both as a child growing up in abusive home and as an adult with a drinking problem—and none of them have been good. He doesn’t like the way that the police seem to box the protestors in. But they’re lined up around the perimeter of the crowd and their presence is enough to scare away newcomers.

As the crowd becomes aware of the police presence—if Grantaire’s not mistaken, the officers are slowly moving in, like they’re trying to corral the students into a smaller space—they start to get restless. Grantaire overhears more than a handful of comments about the “fucking pigs” in uniforms and he’s been around enough temperamental people in his life to tell that the crowd is slowly working itself into a tipping point.

When he looks around at the others, he can tell they sense it too.

“We should split up,” Bahorel says. “Try to keep people calmed down, because it’s not like Enjolras is helping matters.”

Enjolras is currently on the dais railing against the fact that law enforcement doesn’t even seem to care about the safety of trans students on campus and Grantaire begins to understand what Chetta and Bahorel meant earlier when discussing Enjolras’s antagonistic relationship with the police.

They all agree to try to help with crowd control and Bahorel heads toward the back of the crowd where some of the protestors are already trying to engage with the police. Jehan grabs Grantaire’s wrist and pulls him toward the front of the crowd.

“We should be near Eponine,” he says as the approach the front of the crowd. “If this goes bad, we need to be able to get her out.”

He’s absolutely right of course, and Grantaire forces himself to focus on something (anything) other than the sound of Enjolras’s voice because he needs to be here and he needs to be focused because he knows that this is all about to go to hell in a hand basket.

“Do things normally get like this?” Grantaire asks Combeferre.

Combeferre looks absolutely unsurprised to see them and Grantaire notices that the other man has a sharp eye on the police and the closest exits. “Things aren’t normally so tense,” he says. “Of course, they normally don’t try to box us in like animals either.”

“They don’t realize that they’re just making Enjolras fight harder,” Jehan says, staring up at Enjolras.

“You two should be prepared to run if it comes to it,” Combeferre says. “If they start trying to make arrests, get yourselves out of here and we’ll all meet at the Corinth within the hour. It’s our usual rendezvous spot.”

“Was it Courfeyrac’s idea to have the rendezvous spot be a bar?” Grantaire asks. “Because I approve.”

“It was Enj’s, actually,” Combeferre says. “He thought it might throw the police off our tracks a little, since we normally meet at the Musain.”

Grantaire’s lips twitch at the thought of Enjolras exhibiting behavior that’s remotely underhanded.

“Oh, this can’t be good,” Eponine says, nodding her head up to the stage.

An officer has climbed on the stage and waves for Enjolras and Courfeyrac to step down. Grantaire looks behind him and sees that the police are trying to get the students on the edges of the crowd to disperse. Courfeyrac takes center stage, picking up where Enjolras left off in mid-thought, so that Enjolras can talk to the officer that’s trying to get them to step down.

This isn’t good. Grantaire can feel it in his gut.

“You have no right to be here,” he can hear Enjolras shout at the cop. “This is a peaceful protest!”

“You’re on private property, boy. It’s time you all left.”

“We have permission to be here,” Enjolras says. “We cleared it with the university, we signed all the forms.”

“Yeah, well, the university wants you school boys to clear out now.”

“We will not be silenced!”

“If you and your friend come quietly, we’ll let the rest of them go.”

“Is that a threat? We have the right to a peaceful protest! We have the right to make our voices heard!”

“You have the right to shut up,” the cop says, clearly exasperated. “Come on, now. Off the stage.”

He reaches out to grab Enjolras by the arm and yank him off the stage and Enjolras jerks out of the officer's grip abruptly. The sudden change of momentum knocks the officer on his ass.

And the proverbial shit hits the fan.

Grantaire is surprised at how quickly Courfeyrac shrugs out of his non-descript brown coat and throws it’s over Enjolras’s shoulders to cover his red sweater. He grabs Enjolras as he does it and shoves him to the edge of the stage, where Combeferre is waiting to tug him to the ground and shove a beanie over his head to hide his blonde hair.

“Let’s go!” Combeferre barks.

“But Courf—” Enjolras says, resisting against Combeferre’s pushing hands because Courfeyrac is still on the stage, standing between the cop Enjolras shoved and the crowd, providing one last barrier between Enjolras and arrest.

“Courf can handle himself,” Combeferre says. “Now move!”

When Enjolras still struggles, Grantaire takes him by the wrist ( _ignore the way your skin heats against his, ignore it!)_ and yanks him forward. “You can’t help Courf if you get arrested,” he says.

Enjolras trips over his feet—the crowd surges against them, nearly breaking Grantaire’s grip on Enjolras’s wrist because the officers have pulled out clubs and are waving them around indiscriminately—but Grantaire keeps pulling him forward.

“ _They’ve got tear gas!”_ a disembodied voice shouts above the ruckus.

“Take him!” Combeferre says. He’s got one arm around Eponine, trying to protect her from the violent jostling. “I’m going to get her out of here. You know where to meet us!”

“Let’s go, Apollo,” Grantaire says, tightening his grip on the other man’s wrist. “You can’t help the masses if you get your head kicked in.”

His words seem to snap focus back into Enjolras and suddenly it’s not him who’s leading Enjolras but the other way around. Enjolras is nimble and graceful as he navigates the crowd and Grantaire is decidedly less so, but he considers himself a success as long as he doesn’t break anyone’s fingers or toes. At one point he catches a glimpse of Feuilly’s red hair and Jehan’s floral scarf and he hopes that the two of them can make it out of the crowd without being trampled to death.

A body slams against his, breaking his hold on Enjolras’s wrist.

He shoves the body back and lurches forward, trying to keep sight of Enjolras.

They’re near the edge of the crowd. They can make it.

They’re almost there. He’s almost gotten Apollo to safety.

But there’s a police officer ahead on Enjolras’s right—Enjolras doesn’t see him, but the officer clearly notices Enjolras.

And recognizes him.

The cop raises his baton—at this angle, he could hit Enjolras’s head, he could knock him out, he could concuss him, he could kill him—and Grantaire throws himself forward.

His body crashes into Enjolras’s and he feel the cop’s baton crash down on his right shoulder.

His vision goes white with pain.

When he can see again, he’s on the ground and the agonizing pain radiating from his shoulder makes it hard to think, but Enjolras is standing above him, valiantly grappling with cop. He manages to shove the man back and then he’s pulling Grantaire to his feet—the motion wrenches his shoulder and he cries out—and they’re running again.

And then they’re cornered again.

An officer grabs his right arm and yanks and again Grantaire cries out and the pain consumes him and his vision goes black this time.

The next thing he’s completely aware of—it’s disorienting to black out but still be able to hear and his mind is a haze of pain and voices shouting and he’s aware of unyielding hands that he tries to flinch away from—he’s sitting in the back of a police cruiser with his hands bound in front of him with zip ties.

He groans because that’s really the only appropriate response for a situation like this.

The door on the other side of the car opens and Enjolras is forcefully manhandled into the car. Grantaire feels knot of tension in his chest loosen. Enjolras is roughed up, to be sure. Clothes torn and a busted lip and a hint of a black eye, but he’s okay.

Enjolras shouts something dirty and foul-mouthed at the cop before he notices that he’s in the same car as Grantaire and something like relief floods his face before being replaced by anger.

“You idiot!” Enjolras snaps. “What the hell were you thinking? Why did you take that blow for me? Look at you! You look awful!”

He reaches out with his own bound hands and Grantaire jerks back from him violently, unintentionally jamming his shoulder—it doesn’t feel broken, is it dislocated?—against the car door.

“Shit, Grantaire,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire just groans and when he feels Enjolras’s fingers against his wrist—oh hell, can he feel the cutting scars? He can probably feel the scars, oh hell, oh shit—Grantaire flinches away again.

His body aches like it used to after his dad wailed on him and he doesn’t like being yelled at when he feels like this and he especially doesn’t want to feel someone else’s hands on him right now. He can’t—he doesn’t—He can’t breathe.

Enjolras pulls his hands back. “Granatire?” Enjolras says softly. “R, can you hear me?”

Grantaire squeezes his eyes shut but he nods.

“I know your shoulder is hurt,” he says, his voice still soft and steady. It’s the same way Grantaire used to talk to the stray dogs and cats he’d tried to take home as a kid. “But are you hurt anywhere else? Do you need to go to a hospital?”

“No,” he says gruffly. “I’m fine. I’ll be okay.” He’s said those lies so often in his life that they come to him as easily as breathing.

“Your head is bleeding.”

“Head wounds bleed a lot, Apollo,” he says. “It’s not bad.”

“Since when did you become a med student?” Enjolras says dryly.

“Don’t need to be a med student,” he says. “Just have a history with head wounds. It’s fine.”

He doesn’t remember getting hit in the head but everything was so hectic out there that that doesn’t really surprise him.

“Are you okay?” Enjolras asks after a moment.

“I already told you I’m not hurt,” Grantaire says. “Other than my shoulder, of course.”

“I’m not talking about physical injuries,” Enjolras says.

Grantaire opens his eyes and Enjolras is staring at him so intently that he has to look away. “I’m okay,” he says again.

“R?” Enjolras says.

“Yeah?”

“I just want to check your head wound. Is it…is it okay if I touch you?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says softly. “It’s okay if you touch me.”

He doesn’t flinch when Enjolras’s fingers brush against his face and when the officer finally gets in the car to take them in and Enjolras scoots closer to him, as though to offer the simple comfort of another body nearby, Grantaire leans into the touch.

Enjolras doesn’t pull away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for any typos and the like in here. I'm on an insomnia kick right now and I'm only scraping by with three or four hours of sleep each night, so I'm afraid that my proofreading skills are a little sub-par at the moment. Hopefully, my body will remember how much it actually likes sleep and I'll be able to get back on a normal sleep schedule soon. Lucky for you, my lovely readers, I already have the next couple chapters written so I'll be able to keep on my normal posting schedule even if my body continues to delude itself into not sleeping :)
> 
> Thank you all for your continued support and kudos and comments. You really are the best sort of people.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Friday :)


	24. Chapter Twenty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some of our favorites have been arrested

Courfeyrac is the first of his friends to be taken to the police station. He’s probably even the first to be arrested, though that was really unavoidable seeing as how he had taken up the job of _distract the police officer without it seeming like you’re trying to help Enjolras get away_ , which had turned into _keep talking to the officer without appearing to resist arrest_. He’s brought in with a young woman—her name is Linda, he finds out, and her best friend in high school was a trans boy who committed suicide, making this particular issue of particular importance to her—and once they arrive at the police station, they aren’t booked right away, but instead taken straight to the holding cells.

Coufeyrac tries not sigh but doesn’t quite manage it because he’s been arrested at protests enough time to know what this means—the police intend to make more than a handful of arrests tonight and they won’t start processing the protestors through until they’re satisfied that they’ve arrested enough people to discourage this sort of behavior in the future.

Slowly, more and more people trickle into the two holding cells, and Courfeyrac takes the time to introduce himself to every person brought into his cell and the one across the hall. He asks their names, he thanks them for coming to the protest and offering their support, he offers reassurances that everything will work out. He wants every person who was arrested to know that their sacrifice is appreciated. He wants them to know that they matter to him.

Bahorel and Bossuet are the next of Les Amis to come in. Bahorel, who looks no more bruised and battered than he normally does, is put in the cell across the hall and Bossuet is placed with Courfeyrac. Bossuet’s face is red with tears staining his cheeks and he’s coughing. Courfeyrac winces in sympathy and he takes Bossuet by the arm and steers him towards a bench where he can sit down.

“Tear gas, my friend?” he asks.

Bossuet coughs and nods.

“Did they at least let you rinse out your eyes?” If they didn’t, Courfeyrac is going to flag down an officer and demand a little compassion for his friend.

But Bossuet nods again. “Yeah, they did,” he says. “Still burns though.” He coughs. “They said it’d wear off in a half hour or so.”

Courfeyrac nods. “Let me know if it gets worse or if you need anything. Did you see any of the others? Do you know how they’re faring?”

“Joly and Chetta got away,” he says. “I was right behind them, but I tripped and then there was tear gas and, well, here I am now.”

“Here you are indeed,” he says. “Just try to take it easy for a little bit, okay? I’ll check back with you in a little while.”

Satisfied that Bossuet will be okay on his own, he goes to the front of the cell and he doesn’t even have to call to get Bahorel’s attention, because he’s waiting for Courfeyrac at the front of his own cell.

“Bossuet okay?” Bahorel asks.

“He’ll be fine,” he says. At least, he’s pretty sure Bossuet will be fine. Part of him wishes Joly had been arrested because Joly would know for certain. “What about you?”

Bahorel just beams at him. “I might get charged with battery of an officer, but what else is new? And you? Your lip is looking pretty fat.”

Courfeyrac presses his fingers to lip. Sure enough, it’s feeling puffy and inflamed.  He remembers being jostled and shoved when the officer who arrested him escorted him away from the crowd and all he can think is that he must have been clipped by someone without noticing it. “When the hell did that happen?” he says. “No wonder it hurts to talk.”

Bahorel laughs with him.

“Did you see any of the others?”

“Saw Marius’s girl—that petite little blonde thing—practically drag him out the fray. She doesn’t look it, but she’s a tough little thing. I’m pretty sure they got out.”            

“What about Enjolras?”

“Haven’t seen him since Ferre tugged him off the stage. That was quick thinking with your coat, by the way. I don’t know why he insists on always wearing such a bright color of red. It’s too easy to spot.”

“Thanks. Keep an eye on things in your cell for me?”

“Course.”

Courfeyrac nods. Chetta and Joly, Cosette and Marius. Four of his friends are safe. Two more are here with him. Enjolras, Combeferre, Eponine, Grantaire, Feuilly, and Jehan—all still unaccounted for. He allows himself a brief moment of worry for his friends—Enj really can’t afford to be arrested again and if Eponine gets in trouble it’ll jeopardize her risk of winning custody of her siblings and Jehan is just so _thin_ still that he could probably be snapped in half by a violent crowd—and then he forces himself to attend to the people at hand. People have questions for him. Most of them have never been arrested before and they’re nervous and scared about what’s going to happen to them now. Courfeyrac does his best to reassure them—individually, because he feels that in situations like this that the individual contact will do them far more good than him making a generalized announcement—and it’s not long before his voice is nothing more than a hoarse rasp. Between the speech-making of earlier and comfort he’s giving now, his vocal chords are on the verge of giving up the ghost.

He’s taking a break and sitting beside Bossuet on the bench when Feuilly and Jehan are brought in with torn clothes and Jehan’s hair in complete disarray. Bahorel gives Feuilly a hearty welcome—“Well, now, the party can really start!”—and Jehan is brought to Courfeyrac’s cell.

Once Courfeyrac is on his feet, his cellmates clear a path for him to greet Jehan. They’ve all been in here long enough by now to know that he’ll want to speak to the newcomers.

Courfeyrac puts his hand on Jehan’s shoulder—he wants to hug him, but he refrains because he’s not sure how that’ll be received—and he’s utterly relieved to see that Jehan is okay. He’s got a bit of a bruise forming near his eye, but he’s well and he’s alive and he’s whole.

“I got a text from Eponine right before they took my phone,” Jehan says. “She and Combeferre are at the Corinth with some of the others. They’re okay.”

Courfeyrac takes a deep breath. Two more to safety, two more in prison, two more still missing. “Did she say if Enjolras and Grantaire are with them?”

Jehan shakes his head. “Sorry. I saw the two of them at one point, but it was a bit of a mess out there and I lost them. I’m sure they’re fine.”

“And how did you fare, brave poet?”

“Took another student’s elbow to the face,” he says, tapping a finger near the bruise. “And someone thought it’d be a good idea to yank on my hair, but I’m fine. Are you sure you should be talking? Your voice sounds awful.”

Courfeyrac laughs and winces when it makes his throat feel raw. “I’ll be all right with a little tea and some rest,” he says. “Neither of which I’ll be getting tonight. Would you mind sitting with Bossuet for a bit? He got tear gassed and his eyes are still bothering him. He could use some company, and I want to check that Feuilly’s okay.”

“Check with Feuilly,” he says, “but then take a break yourself, okay? You’re no good to anyone if you wear yourself out.”

He promises to take it easy to appease Jehan and then check in with Feuilly, who appears to come out the best of any of them. His palms are a little skinned from catching himself on the pavement after he tripped, but other than that he’s fine. Courfeyrac sags a little against the bars as they talk because he really feels exhausted and he wishes that Enjolras and Combeferre were in here with him, because he feels stronger with them at his side. He doesn’t have the same natural propensity to lead that they do, just more of a natural inclination to help people and with all the worry and all the stress, he’s feeling out of his depth.

Bahorel, as though he can see Courfeyrac’s waning enthusiasm, starts to nag Courfeyrac to go take a break, but his nagging (which feels more like harassing, to some degree) cuts off with Grantaire’s arrival. He’s cradling his right arm against his chest and drying blood is smeared along the left side of his face. He winces when he’s prodded into Bahorel’s cell.

“Shit, Grantaire,” Courfeyrac says, his previous exhaustion fleeing in light of Grantaire’s distress.

“I’m fine,” Grantaire says. “It’s just dislocated.”

“ _Just_ dislocated? They should have taken you to a hospital!”

Grantaire shakes his head. “It’ll be fine. I just need to pop it back into place before it swells too much.”

“Yeah, that sounds real fine,” Courfeyrac says.

Jehan joins him at the bars. “R?” he says. “R, what happened?”

“It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” he says. “It’s okay. I’m okay, Jehan.”

Jehan frowns a little, clearly not content with Grantaire’s lies.

Grantaire looks of his shoulder. “Any chance that Joly or Combeferre are in here somewhere?”

“Nope, they made it out,” Bahorel says. “I can reset that for you, though.”

“You can reset shoulders?”

“Had to do it all the time in high school wrestling.” Bahorel stands behind Grantaire and prods at the muscle.

“You really should have let them take you to the hospital, R,” Jehan says.

“It’s real easy, once you know the trick to it,” Bahorel says.

“And your head is bleeding. I haven’t—you haven’t looked this bad in _years_.”

“You just have to grab it, like so—”

“Jehan, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I—” Grantaire’s voice cuts off with a sharp cry of pain as Bahorel pops his shoulder back into place. “You son of a bitch,” he says when he catches his breath.

“It’s okay though now, right?” Jehan asks.

Grantaire obligingly moves his arm around to satisfy Jehan.

“See?” he says. “I told you it’d be fine.”

“You should rest,” Jehan says. “And you really shouldn’t be in _jail_ right now.”

“Hey, R,” Courfeyrac says. “You were with Enjolras, right?”

“We got arrested together,” Grantaire says. “Once we got in, though, they took him somewhere else. For questioning, I guess, thought I don’t really know what there is to question him about.”

Courfeyrac and Bahorel exchange a look.

“What do you think?” Bahorel asks. “Javert?”

“Definitely Javert,” Courfeyrac says.

“Who’s Javert?”

“Javert is like the douche cop from hell,” Bahorel says.

“He and Enjolras have a...history,” Courfeyrac says.

“He’s...fair, to be fair,” Feuilly says, to which Bahorel mutters, “Who wants to be fair?”

“He’s fair until he’s convinced that you’re guilty of something," Courfeyrac says, "then he’s like a rabid dog with a bone.”

“Do rabid dogs like bones?” Jehan asks.

“Not the point,” Courfeyrac says.

“Is he going to be okay?” Grantaire asks.

“If he keeps his mouth shut,” Courfeyrac says. “If he’s thinking straight, he’ll lawyer up pretty quick.” He sighs. “Is he okay, at least? Or is as roughed up as you are?”

“He’s a little bruised around the edges,” Grantaire says, “but overall he’s fine.”

“Good,” Courfeyrac  says. He drags his hand through his hair. “Good.”

Jehan looks at him through narrowed eyes. “You should get some rest, too,” he says.

“I want to be awake when they start booking everyone.”

“Courf, they’re not going to book us till morning,” Bahorel says. “You know that. Try to get some rest. I’ll hold the fort over here.”

Courfeyrac is about to argue, but then he realizes how stupid that would be. Bahorel’s right. No one is going to get processed until morning, so they might as well make themselves comfortable and bunker down for the night. He wonders if that urge he feels to stay awake and to take care of everything is similar to what Enjolras feels all the time. It would certainly explain a lot.

He makes Bahorel promise to holler if anything happens and he retreats to the back of the cell. Bossuet, whose eyes are starting to fare a bit better, has given up the bench he was sitting on for a pair of girls and now sits against the wall. He smiles when Courfeyrac and Jehan approach and pats the floor on either side of him.

“I saved you guys the best seat in the house,” he says with a smile.

Courfeyrac chuckles a little and sits down on one side of Bossuet. It’s a testament to how exhausted he feels that he falls asleep within seconds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I really don't know much about the American police system (as I have yet to cross getting arrested off my bucketlist haha). I did some research online about what happens when you get arrested, but that only told me so much, so basically this chapter is mostly based off my lazy researching and what I've learned from watching crime dramas. So many apologies for any glaring inaccuracies that might be in there.
> 
> Regardless, thanks so much for reading (and commenting and kudosing and everything else)! You're all amazing :)
> 
> The next chapter will be up on Tuesday


	25. Chapter Twenty-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some of our favorites are released from jail and we get our first glimpse of Jehan's dad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for some homophobic language

Jehan doesn’t sleep that night. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, because he does. He’s exhausted and his body aches and a few hours of sleep on the floor with Bossuet and Courfeyrac is definitely better than no sleep at all, but he can’t get his mind to shut up.

This is hardly the first time this has happened. He and insomnia are old friends. Well, maybe not friends because he would dearly love to be able to sleep, but they’re definitely old acquaintances. Courfeyrac had fallen asleep pretty quickly and Bossuet followed him not long after—and most everyone else in the cell seems to follow suit within the next hour. Except for Jehan, who tries to pace the length of the holding cell but can’t because it’s too crowded.

He makes his way to the front of the cell, taking care not to step on any fingers or toes, and from the front of the cell, he can see across the hall and see that Grantaire, Bahorel, and Feuilly have all managed to claim a bit of floor for themselves and fallen asleep. Which is a shame, because he knows that Grantaire has trouble sleeping sometimes too and he really would appreciate the company right now. But with as injured as Grantaire is, it’s probably for the best. His body needs the sleep.

Resigning himself to a night of solitude, he settles himself in the front corner of the cell, where he has a good vantage of the night-shift cops coming and going, and taps out rhythms against his knees to keep himself  occupied. It gets old within ten minutes and absolutely unbearable after thirty. When he sees a friendly looking officer approach, he stands up to get the officer’s attention. “Excuse me,” he says softly, trying not to wake his cell-mates, “but could I trouble you for a pen?”

“What are you going to do with a pen?” the officer—Stanwell, her nametag reads—says.

“Write.”

Stanwell gives him an amused smile. “Do you have any paper?”

Jehan tugs up the sleeves of his sweaters, revealing pale forearms that have served as paper well enough for him in the past. “I don’t need paper,” he says. “This’ll work just fine.”

“You’re going to give yourself ink poisoning, kid.”

Jehan smiles at her. “I think that would be the least of my problems right now.”

Stanwell laughs and shakes her head at him. But she still pulls a pen out of the stack of paperwork she’s carrying and offers it to him.

Jehan passes the time writing verses on the inside of wrist, and when he runs out of room, he scribbles with his non-dominant hand on his other arm and bemoans the fact that he never could quite get the hang of ambidexterity. He loses himself in a steady rhythm of words, each carefully chosen to recount the intensity of the night. By morning when the police start processing the protestors, Jehan has a completed poem scrawled over his wrists and arms. Well, maybe not complete, but at the very least it’s a draft of something with potential.

And along with the completion of his draft-of-a-poem, he’s caught a second wind. Or maybe it’s a third or fourth wind now. But as the officers remove his cellmates one-by-one, he feels filled with a manic sort of energy. It’s a weird energy—like electricity under his skin that fuels him but doesn’t quite keep his mind working sharply—but it’s energy nonetheless. It’s something to keep him going.

Grantaire wakes when Bahorel and Feuilly are escorted out to be processed and when he comes to the front of his cell, Jehan gets to his feet to greet him. There are bars and a hallway between them, but if it weren’t for the officers ushering last night’s protesters this way and that, it would be almost an intimate meeting.

“How’s your head doing?” Jehan asks.

The side of Grantaire’s face is still stained in dried blood and he really wishes that someone here could have at least given him a wet paper towel to clean himself off with. He doesn’t like seeing blood on Grantaire’s skin. It reminds him too much of when they were teenagers and Grantaire still lived with his dad and was liable to show up at school every morning with any manner of bruises or contusions.

“My head is fine,” he says. He even smiles to show Jehan that he’s being honest. “I could do with some more sleep.” He rubs his neck like there’s a crick in it. “And definitely a pillow, but my head is just fine. How are you?”

Jehan threads his arms through the bars so he can lean on the crossbar a bit better. “Tired,” Jehan says. “Antsy.”

Grantaire narrows his eyes. “You didn’t get much sleep, did you?”

“None at all,” he says.

“Jehan—”

“I would have slept if I could,” he says. “But I just...” He shrugs and Grantaire nods. “It has given me plenty of time to think things over, though,” he adds.

“Think what over?”

“I’ve got it all figured out. We both get our one phone call, yeah? I’ll use mine to call my dad and try to wheedle some bail money for us out of him, and you can use yours to call Mont and have him come and pick us up once they release us.”

Grantaire gapes at him. “You want me to call your less-than-legally-inclined boyfriend and tell him you’ve been arrested? You’re shitting me.”

“You think he’ll be upset that I was arrested?” Jehan asks, cocking his head to the side. “Hmm. Here I was thinking he’d be proud of me.”

Grantaire laughs. “Oh, he’ll be proud, but I don’t want to be the one who explains the police brutality to him.”

“All right,” he says. He smiles at Courfeyrac, who has pried himself off of Bossuet’s shoulder and come to join them at the bars. “If you don’t want to call Mont, I’ll call him and you can call my dad to get the money.”

“Never mind,” Grantaire says quickly. “I’ll call Montparnasse.”

Jehan laughs and turns his attention to Courfeyrac. “Good morning, sunshine,” he says. The greeting feels natural in his mouth, though his mind thinks it might be problematic to call Courfeyrac _sunshine_ , however fitting the moniker is.

Courfeyrac quirks a smile at him. “You’re awfully chipper,” he says. His voice still sounds hoarse.

“That’s because he never actually slept,” Grantaire says.

Jehan rolls his eyes. “I did manage to convince one of the officers to lend me a pen.” He pulls up his sleeve and shows Courfeyrac the scribbles on his arm. “I wrote a poem. Start to finish. So the night wasn’t a complete waste.”

He tugs his sleeve back down when he notices that Courfeyrac is trying to read the words scribbled on his arm.

“Well, I’m glad to see the night was productive for someone,” Courfeyrac says. He winces when he smiles.

Jehan brushes his fingertips against the curve of Courfeyrac’s swollen lip. It’s not as bad as it looked last night, though it’s still puffy. “It seems to have done your lip some good,” he says. “It’s not as swollen. Your voice still sounds awful though.”

“I could say the same about that bruise you’re sporting,” he says. He gently brushes some of Jehan’s hair to get a better look at the bruise on his face.

“His bruise sounds awful?” Grantaire quips from across the way.

Courfeyrac makes a rude hand gesture at him.

“They’re getting us all processed, by the way,” Jehan says. “I don’t know if Bossuet’s awake and  told you. I overheard that most of them are being released without bail, but I think since we’re actually affiliated with Enjolras, we won’t be so lucky. Bahorel and Feuilly are making their phone calls now.”

Courfeyrac nods, as though he had expected all of this, which makes Jehan wonder how many times his friends have been arrested while carrying out ABC activities. He doesn’t get the chance to ask because a moment later, an officer escorts Bahorel and Feuilly back to the cell and Jehan and Courfeyrac are the next to be processed. He and Courfeyrac are led to opposite ends of the bullpen where an officer sits with them and takes their statements and fills out a lot of tedious looking paperwork. Jehan is actually paired with the Officer Stanwell and she laughs when Jehan returns her pen to her.

Jehan listens carefully as Stanwell explains the charges Jehan is under and the amount of bail that he’s been set. She’s patient with Jehan as he asks questions about bail and payment options and Jehan can feel his stomach start to knot. It’s an uncomfortable sensation to accompany the manic energy that still powers his body, but he can’t help the anxiety because he knows he’s going to have an unpleasant conversation with his dad. The bail is set at eight hundred dollars, which is small change for his dad. Even doubling it to be able to cover Grantaire isn’t enough to put a dent in his dad’s bank account, but his dad is miserly. He’s not going to want to part with it just because Jehan got in trouble.

When Officer Stanwell directs him to a set of courtesy phones, Jehan feels like he might be walking to his doom. The phones have old fashioned chords and Jehan twists his fingers in it after he dials and waits for the phone to ring. His parents’ housekeeper answers the phone.

“Hi, Marta,” Jehan says. “This is Jean. I was wondering if my father’s home?”

It’s a Thursday morning and there’s a good chance that his dad might already be at work, but it’s still early and Jehan thinks his dad might still be home. If not, he’ll ask Marta for his dad’s cell phone number and his work number because he doesn’t have either of those memorized, though they are programmed in his phone.

“Mister Jean,” Marta says. He can hear the smile in her voice. He’s always liked Marta. She and the family cook had always gone out of their way to make his childhood and adolescence a little more bearable. “Mister Prouvaire is having breakfast right now.”

“Ah,” he says. His dad doesn’t like being disturbed during meals. “Uhm, well, this is...this is kind of urgent.”

“Could you talk to Mrs. Prouvaire?”

“No,” he says slowly. His dad doesn’t let his mom have direct access to their bank accounts. He gives her anything she asks for, of course, but she still has to ask and he doesn’t know how long it would take his mom to talk his dad into transferring the money for bail. It’s better just to deal with him directly. “No, this is something I need to talk to him about.”

“Just one moment, Mister Jean.”

Jehan waits. Marta must have answered the portable phone and taken it with her because he can hear fragments of mumbled conversation and he can make out his dad’s snippy tone. He wraps his arm around his abdomen and grips his sweater at his waist. This is going to be bad. So very, very bad.

“Tell me, Jean,” his dad says when he gets on the phone. “Tell me just what’s so important that you had to call me over breakfast to tell me.”

“I...sorry,” he says. _Shit, Jehan, don’t apologize to him_. The voice in his head sounds remarkably like Mont. “I just...uhm...the reason I called is that, uhm, I—I—”

“For crying out loud, Jean, spit it out.”

“I was arrested last night,” he says quickly, squeezing his eyes shut because this is going to be so very, very bad. “I need money for bail.”

“You what?”

When Jehan opens his eyes, he sees that Courfeyrac has taken his place at the other courtesy phone. He gives Jehan a sympathetic smile before turning his attention back to his phone call.

“I was arrested,” Jehan repeats, trying to ignore how relaxed Courfeyrac sounds on the phone next to him. “I was part of a protest and—”

“This is about the drugs, isn’t it?”

“No, Dad, it’s not like that—”

“Don’t pretend like I don’t know you waste your life on that shit.”

“I know—”

“Don’t play me for a fool, Jean. Your mother found that marijuana in your room—”

“I know what Mom found in my room,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But I swear, that’s not what I was hauled in for.”

“So what is it, then? You get into trouble with that delinquent you’re selling yourself too?”

His stomach churns. Great. His dad thinks that he’s a prostitute now. His dad thinks he’s some kind of junkie who sleeps with his dealer to get a fix. Perfect. “No, Dad, just—”

“Damn it, Jean, you were arrested for sex crimes, weren’t you?” he says. “You were off having faggy sex and they caught you.”

“Being gay isn’t even a crime anymore!” Jehan says. “Turn on the news. I was in a protest—I’m sure there’s something on the news about it—”

“That protest? The one that was in the paper this morning about those trannies? ‘Students Run Amok in City’? That’s what you were involved in?”

“We weren’t running amok,” Jehan says defensively.

“I thought I told you to keep your head down. I know you buy into all that gay liberal shit, but the company went public last summer and most of my investors are conservative, Jean. Do you know what this looks like?”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You weren’t named in the paper, so there’s at least that, but honestly—I know you’re an idiot, but I thought you were smart enough not to implicate yourself in shit like this. If your name leaks out—hell, the legal fees _alone_ , Jean, honestly—”

“I’m sorry,” he says again because it’s all he can think to say. He didn’t think. He didn’t think about how his involvement with the ABC would impact his dad’s business. Granted, he didn’t think he’d be getting arrested for a peaceful protest, either, but he really should have been more careful. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Of course you didn’t mean to,” his dad snaps. “You never mean to, but that doesn’t prevent you from being such a fuck up in the first place.”

Jehan forces himself to take a deep breath. _You have a boyfriend who loves you. You have friends who care about you. You write poetry that your professors think is worthy of publication. You are more than your mistakes._ Funny. Now the voice in his head sounds like Grantaire. “I’m sorry,” he says one more time.

“Yeah, well, a fat lot of good that’s going to do us now,” he says. “All we can hope is that enough money will make this all go away. What do you need for bail?”

He licks his lips. He’s thought it over and this is the right thing to do, he knows it, but his dad is still going to freak out. “Three thousand.”

He aims high in case his dad refuses to pay the full amount.

“Three—three thousand?” he sputters. “For an idiot protest? Fuck, Jean, are you sure they didn’t haul you in for prostitution?”

“No, Dad—”

“You’re shitting me.”

“That’s how much it is,” he says.

“Three thousand fucking dollars?”

“I know it’s a lot, but it’s not as much as it could be. They were going to charge me with rioting, and that’s five thousand—”

“Five thousand dollars? For rioting? What the hell is wrong with these people? A couple of idiot students get drunk and high and make a fuss and they call that a riot? You’re not getting five thousand dollars from me.”

“I only need three—”

“And that’s still obscene.”

“You get it all back when I go to the hearing,” Jehan says. He doesn’t know if his dad actually knows how bail works and he needs to keep his dad from freaking out and withholding the money altogether.

“And are you going to the damn hearing?”

“Of course I’m going to the hearing,” he says. “I’ll be arrested if I don’t.”

“You’ve already been arrested, Jean. Or is that the point of all this—you want to be arrested. You want to be thrown in prison for the rest of your adult life. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like being a burden are hard-working tax-payers, making someone else pay for your expenses. You know what they’d do to a fruity man like you in prison?”

He groans. “Yes, Dad. I know what they’d do to someone like me in a men’s prison.”

“You just want to be some man’s bitch, don’t you?”

“No, I—”

“You are such a fucking disappointment. Look what I can tell the guys over golf this weekend—yes, I’m so proud of my son the faggot who aspires to be someone’s whiny little bitch.”

“Are you going to transfer the money or not?” he snaps, suddenly losing hold of his temper. He glances to the side to see Courfeyrac giving him a concerned look. He just shakes his head.

“You had better check that attitude, boy,” his dad says. “I don’t like it. You’ve gotten yourself into this mess and you’ve be well-served if you end up in prison over this. I have half the mind not to give you the money at all and let you rot in jail until your hearing. I’m sure you’d have a couple of cell mates or maybe a guard or two who could show you what a mouthy attitude will get you. Lucky for you, it’s in my interests to cover your ass on this one. I’ll transfer the damn money into your account, but I expect to have every penny back after the hearing.”

“Okay,” he says softly.

“You owe me for this, Jean. You’ve been nothing but a financial burden lately and I’m not going to tolerate that. You don’t call the shots here, I do, and I want you to shape up and toe the line. I’m holding the reins, Jean, and I expect perfection.”

“Just let me know what you want me to do,” he says. He hates himself a little for this. He hates how easily he bends to his dad’s demands, how he feels that he owes that man something. He hates that he’s still trying to be the perfect son when he should have given up on that dream years ago.

After his dad hangs up, Jehan returns the phone to the cradle. Courfeyrac is waiting for him next to the other phone.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,” Jehan says. He really doesn’t want to think about how much of his phone conversation that Courfeyrac heard.

“You know, I only heard one half of that conversation, but your dad’s an ass.”

Jehan just shrugs. Now that the pressure and stress of talking to his dad is gone, he feels exhausted. He just wants to go home and sleep for a couple of days.

“Can I ask you something though?”     

“I guess.”

“Bail for each of us was set at eight hundred dollars. You asked your dad for more than three times that.”

Jehan shoves his hands in his pockets. “Oh, well, I needed some for myself, obviously, and I’m paying for Grantaire, too, because I know he doesn’t have that kind of money. And Feuilly—he and I have talked and I know he’s working three jobs just to put himself through school, and it’s not like my dad doesn’t have the money to spare, so I just figured  I’d get enough to cover for him, too.” He shrugs. “It seemed easier to ask for three grand instead of twenty-four hundred and I at least had some wiggle room if he decided not to give me the full amount. Bahorel or Bossuet or both or anyone else can use the extra to help mitigate their own bail.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Courfeyrac says. “Normally Enjolras and Combeferre and I can usually pull together enough money to cover bail for those who can’t afford it.”

“It’s no bother. It’s nice to be able to help.” He likes the idea that he’s able to do something for other people, something they couldn’t do for themselves. It makes groveling in front of his father more palatable.

Courfeyrac slings an arm around Jehan’s shoulder and he leans into it because it’s so nice to have the comfort of another body against his own. “You’re a good man, Prouvaire,” he says. “Even if asshats like your dad don’t see it.”

It’s another hour before they’re all processed through and released on bail. There’s a bit of a hang up because the police don’t like the idea of Jehan paying bail for three of them, but in the end there wasn’t anything illegal per se about him doing that and the police have no choice but to let them go.

The air outside is chilly but refreshing after spending the night in an overcrowded holding cell. The sun is out, and Jehan loves the way it feels against his skin. Bahorel whoops once they’re outside before he, Feuilly, and Bossuet head off in one direction. Jehan links arms with Grantaire as they walk in the other direction. Mont told Grantaire that he’d wait for them just around the block. According to Grantaire, Mont would have picked them up in front of the station but didn’t think being seen with him would help their case at all.

Courfeyrac hollers after them to wait up a moment later, and he and Grantaire pause to allow him to catch up.

“I got a text from Combeferre,” he says to Grantaire. “He’s over at your place. Mind if I walk with you?”

“I was actually going to hitch a ride with Montparnasse,” Grantaire says.

Jehan smiles at Courfeyrac. “I can ask him if he wouldn’t mind giving you a ride. Since we’re heading over there anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Courfeyrac hesitates for a second, and Jehan is certain it’s because of Courfeyrac’s misgivings about Montparnasse. He knows Courfeyrac doesn’t like his boyfriend, knows that Courfeyrac thinks their relationship is unhealthy, but he’s grateful that Courfeyrac hasn’t let those misgivings get in the way of their friendship.

“If it’s no trouble,” Courfeyrac says.

Montparnasse waits for them at the corner, and when Jehan spots him, he pulls away from Grantaire and nearly runs to his boyfriend. He feels safe in Mont’s arms and Mont’s kiss drives away the residual feelings from talking to his dad. Mont takes Jehan by the chin and tilts his face up and to the side, exposing the bruise on the side of his face to the sunlight.

“Did the police do this to you?” he asks. “Those fucking pigs.”

“R has it worse,” Jehan says. He glances over his shoulder as Grantaire and Courfeyrac meet up with them. Before their release, Grantaire had tried to wipe most of the blood off his face but did little more than smearing it. He looks awful.

“All that non-violent, no police brutality shit is a bunch of fucking lies,” Mont says. “I’m not the only one with scars from their heavy-handed shit.”

Jehan’s not sure if he imagines the uncomfortable look that crosses over Courfeyrac’s face, like Courfeyrac is uncomfortable with the idea of how many times Mont has had run-ins with the police. But Jehan smiles at Mont. “I guess you’ll just have to kiss the bruises better,” he says.

Mont smirks at him and drapes his arm around his shoulders and pulls him close.

There isn’t an inch of space between their bodies, and Mont stands between him and his friends, almost as though he’s standing as a protective barrier between Jehan and the rest of the world.

“Courf is headed back to R’s place,” Jehan says as Mont leads him to the car. “You don’t mind giving him a ride, do you?”

Mont gives Courfeyrac a once over and tugs Jehan even closer to him. Jehan thinks it’s an oddly possessive gesture, but he doesn’t mention it.

“Who are you again?” Mont asks.

“He’s one of the guys who’s helping Eponine with all that legal stuff about her siblings,” Jehan says. Mont has always had a bit of a soft spot for Eponine—even if she does end up yelling at him most times she sees him—and Jehan knows that Mont will be a bit nicer to someone who’s helping Eponine than to someone who’s not.

“I guess it’s okay,” Mont says. “You can keep Grantaire from bleeding all over the seats.”

“Thanks,” Courfeyrac says.

Grantaire rolls his eyes. “Yeah, like your upholstery is that fucking impressive to begin with. You puked all over the backseat when we went bar hopping on Labor Day.”

“My car, my puke,” Mont says. “Doesn’t mean I want your blood all over everything. Who knows what sort of venereal diseases you have.”

“You’re an ass,” Grantaire says when they get to the car.

Mont opens the passenger side door for Jehan. “And you can walk home,” he says.

“Mont,” Jehan says.

Mont sighs. “You’re lucky he likes you, Grantaire,” he says. “Now, come on, losers. Get in the car. I don’t have all day to be taxing your asses all over town.”

Jehan gets into the car and does up his seat belt, feeling completely at ease in the car even if Mont’s driving is a little rough. Most of Mont is a little rough, though, and Jehan’s not sure he’d like him any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My disclaimer about knowing nothing about the American legal system still stands (though I did do some extensive research about bail prices--the LA police department had a very extensive and very useful chart about standard bail prices, which I shameless ripped off even though this is set in New York and not LA). But my apologies for an inaccurate or unbelievable depictions of police and the legal system (and if any of you out there are secret legal buffs, drop me a line!).
> 
> Anyway, thanks for your continued to support. I love you all. You're all welcome to say hi to me on tumblr @ kingesstropolis, but I will confess to being rather inept at my tumblr usage, so I don't post much. But you're still welcome to say hi :)
> 
> The next chapter will be up on this Friday


	26. Chapter Twenty-Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan and Mont have a disagreement and the Amis make some plans

After they drop Grantaire and Courfeyrac off, Jehan spends most of Thursday laying on the couch, half-dozing, half-watching whatever Mont has on the TV at the time. He’s exhausted—physically, mentally, and emotionally—and he’s perfectly content to let Mont take care of him. He gives Mont sleepy smiles and sleepy kisses as silent Thank You's when Mont does thoughtful things for him. Mont’s been back for only a week now, and Jehan couldn’t be more grateful to have him back right now.

When he wakes up on Friday, he’s still feeling sluggish so he skips his classes, even though he knows he shouldn’t, considering he missed Monday and Thursday of this week already, but mostly he doesn’t care. Mont stays with him in the morning but has to leave around noon to take care of some business. Jehan uses his absence to relax and recharge and refocus. He takes a long soak in the bathtub, letting the hot water soothe away any remaining tension in his muscles. He works a little on some poems he needs to turn in for class before turning his attention to the dishes that have gathered in the sink and the day-to-day clutter that’s gathered in the living room. He just finished putting the now-clean dishes away when he gets a text from Grantaire, who tells him that a bunch of them are meeting at the Musain for coffee and that he should come. He texts Grantaire back to let him know he’ll be along in about twenty minutes.

He’s grabbing his coat and his scarf, about to leave, when Mont comes home. Mont gives him a strange look.

“Are you headed out?” he asks.

“I’m just going down to the Musain for a bit,” he says.

“You seeing those people down there again?”

“If by those people you mean my friends, then yeah. R said some of them were meeting there for coffee.”

“I don’t know why you and Grantaire want to hang out with that lot,” Mont says. “Just a bunch of rich white boys.”

“Not all of my friends are rich and white—or even boys,” he says. “Besides, _I’m_ a rich white boy.”

“You’re different. You’ve always been different.”

“Which does not change my status as rich white boy.”

“Whatever,” Mont says. He shrugs out of his leather jacket and drops it on the couch. “It doesn’t matter. I still don’t want you spending time with them.”

Jehan frowns at him. “Why not?”

“I don’t like them.”

“I’m not asking you to hang out with them,” he says. “And you spend time with people I don’t like all the time.”

“I just don’t trust them, bird. I want you to stay away.”

“Are you even listening to yourself? Mont, you make a living breaking the law and you’re worried about my friends, the social activists?”

“The social activists you got you involved in a riot.”

“It was hardly a riot.”

“You got arrested.”

“You’re jealous,” Jehan says, smirking as he leans against the counter and crosses his arms. “You’re jealous that the first time I got arrested I was with them instead of you.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Mont says. “I’m not fucking jealous.”

Jehan raises an eyebrow. “Then what is this about? You’ve never cared about who my friends are before.’

“That’s because before your only fucking friend was Grantaire.”

He doesn’t want to want to admit how much that hurts. “Oh go fuck yourself,” he snaps.

“Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

“Not now, I’m not.” He doesn’t know what this is, why they’re arguing like this, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t have the patience to deal with Mont’s moodiness right now.

Mont closes the distance between them and puts his hands on Jehan’s shoulders. “Babe, calm down.”

Jehan pushes his hands away. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m not telling—”

“Oh? You tell me to calm down, you tell me not spend time with my friends—”

Mont cuts him off with a kiss and Jehan shoves him away.

“What is wrong with you?”

“I’m not the one overreacting,” Mont says. “You were fucking arrested, Jehan! I’m allowed to think that maybe you’re not making the best decisions right now!”

“So you get to make them for me? It’s not as though you have a pristine track record either!”

“Look, Jehan, I love you—which is more than those yuppies down at that café can say—and I’m going to do what I need to to keep you safe, whether you like it or not.”

Jehan rolls his eyes. “You know what I’ve always loved most about you, Mont? When nearly everyone else in my life worries about telling me what to do and how to be and keeping me safe and protected—you never did. You always encouraged me to stand up for myself, to make decisions for myself. You never once tried to wrap me up and coddle me—and now that you’re trying, I kind of hate you for it.”

“So you’re allowed to worry about me, but I’m not allowed to worry about you?”

“You’re allowed to worry all you want, but you don’t get to tell me what to do.” He grabs his coat and scarf off the countertop. “Now I’m going down to the Musain to have some coffee with my friends. If you have a problem with that, we can talk about it later when you’re not acting like such an overprotective ass.”

When he leaves, he slams the door behind him.

Courfeyrac, Combeferre, Eponine, and Grantaire are all squeezed around a table when Jehan arrives and Courfeyrac smiles at him. Jehan goes straight to the counter and orders a hazelnut hot chocolate—opting for something more comforting than his usual chai latte—and by the time his order is ready, Courfeyrac and Grantaire have managed to squeeze in another chair between them so he has somewhere to sit.

“No braid today, Flower Boy?” Courfeyrac asks, swatting at the loose bun Jehan tied his hair into as he sits down.

“Couldn’t be bothered,” he says.

“You okay?”

Jehan looks up from his hot chocolate. The others are all watching him. He tries not to groan because having everyone’s attention on him is not what he wants right now. “I’m fine.” He turns to Grantaire. “How’s your head doing?”

Grantaire gives him a look that suggests that he knows he’s lying but doesn’t demand answers. He simply pushes back his hair so Jehan can see the healing cut along his hairline. “The good doctor says it’s healing just fine,” he says.

 “I’m not actually a doctor,” Combeferre says. “And you really shouldn’t be taking medical advice from me. I’m not even in med school yet.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the closest we’ve got,” Courfeyrac says.

Combeferre launches into a well-practiced lecture about why it’s irresponsible to take medical advice from someone who’s not actually a doctor—he and Joly both have to give this speech with alarming regularity—and Eponine and Grantaire start listing all the reasons why Combeferre still gives better medical advice than anything they ever received as children.

Courfeyrac nudges him with his elbow while the others are talking. “Seriously, though, you okay?”

Jehan sighs. “Just got in a little snit with Mont before I left.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“He thinks you guys are a bad influence on me or something.”

Courfeyrac raises his eyebrows. “Seriously? Does he see the irony of that?”

“It was lost on him.”

“Hmm,” Courfeyrac says, “I guess it just goes against his criminal sensibilities for you to be a force for good in the world.”

“I’m hardly a force for good.”

“If you’re friends with Enjolras, you’re automatically a force for good in the world,” Courfeyrac says.

“How is Enj anyway?” Jehan asks. “I spent most of yesterday asleep on the couch. I assume he was released?”

“Yeah, the police got sick of him around five yesterday, but I think that had more to do with the fact that they couldn’t hold him for more than twenty-four hours than anything else.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah, Ferre looked him over when he got home. Just a little bruised and exhausted. I think he’s still asleep, actually.”

“Good,” he says. “He needs to relax.”

“Would you mind telling him that?” Courfeyrac says. “He won’t listen to me.”

“I’ll add it to my to-do list,” Jehan says. “But how are things with you? I mean, other than being arrested together, I feel like I’ve hardly seen you this week—”

“That’s because you’ve spent most of your time locked away in your apartment with your boyfriend this week,” Courfeyrac says.

Jehan rolls his eyes. “Heaven forbid I spend time with my boyfriend after he goes missing for a week,” he says. “But you had a date last weekend. How’d that go?”

Jehan’s not sure if Courfeyrac could tell that he wants to get the conversation topic off of him and Mont or if he really has been dying talk to someone about this date, but either way, Courfeyrac launches into a humorous tale of a date that was a disaster from start to finish, and while Jehan is legitimately disappointed that the date went poorly for Courfeyrac’s sake, he can’t help but laugh when Courfeyrac describes how his date puked all over his shoes after she drank one too many cocktails.

Courfeyrac is in the middle of telling Jehan about his struggle to get the poor girl home when Enjolras shows up. Jehan expected Enjolras to look a bit tired, perhaps, or maybe a little disheartened that the protest went poorly, but if anything, he looks more fired up than usual. A few bruises stand out prominently against his fair skin, but he’s practically vibrating with energy as he approaches their table.

“We’ve got a problem,” Enjolras says, tossing a newspaper down on the table. The front page has a picture of a geriactric politician giving a speech and Jehan turns his head so he can read the headline, which, as far as he can tell, is about the backlash against a southern politician who’s trying to de-criminalize spousal rape.

“Are we fighting for the rights of the patriarchy, now?” Courfeyrac asks.

“No,” Enjolras says. “There was another attack on a sex worker. It’s mentioned—briefly—on page seven.”

“Is she okay?” Eponine asks.

“She’s dead,” Enjolras says.

Jehan glances at Grantaire and notices the way his hands clench around his coffee cup.

“Apparently,” Enjolras continues, “she’s been dead since she went missing two weeks ago. The other women were just attacked—this one was murdered.”

There has already been one other death because of these attacks—one of the women died from some sort of medical complication from one of her injuries—but until now whoever’s been behind this seemed content to harm instead of kill.

“Shit,” Courfeyrac says.

Combeferre grabs the paper and turns to page seven. “There’s hardly anything in here,” he says. “You’d think there’d be a bit more hype about this.”

“Of course there’s not,” Courfeyrac says. “The good newspaper reading populace doesn’t want to read about murdered hookers over their breakfasts.”

“It’s escalating,” Enjolras says, “and it needs to stop.”

“And are you going to stop it, Apollo?” Grantaire asks. “Going up against a man or a gang or whatever that’s escalated to murder sounds like a great idea.”

“We can’t allow these women to continue to be brutalized! The fact that it’s even _gotten_ this far is completely unacceptable.”

“R is right though,” Jehan says. “Whoever is doing this is dangerous. We’re not going to be able to stop them. We’re just a group of students.”

“We can’t stop them, no,” Enjorlas says, “but we can call attention to what’s going on. We can demand that the police take action and we can rally the public to stand with us. We’ve been pouring so much effort into the housing issue lately that we’ve barely done any work on this, and that needs to change.”

Combeferre nods. “We need to make the public sympathetic to these women and their plight.”

“We should talk to them,” Enjolras says. “Hear from them how these attacks are affecting them and their daily lives.”

“And spread their stories from there,” Courfeyrac says. “I know Chetta’s ideas about filming them and putting it on youtube was problematic, but the idea behind it is solid.”

Grantaire and Eponine exchange a look.

“They’re not going to want to talk,” Eponine says.

“I don’t think they want to get murdered either,” Enjolras says.

“All the attacks are happening in the same part of town,” Combeferre says. “We can go down there, scout out the area.”

“You are so going to get arrested again,” Eponine says to Enjolras.

“We should go today,” Enjolras says. “This woman was dead and missing for almost two weeks without anyone doing anything about this. Who knows how many other women are missing.”

“So, you’re proposing that a couple of rich boys go down town and talk to some prostitutes?” Eponine says. “This is going to be a disaster.”

“You could come with me,” Enjolras says. “I imagine they might be more comfortable talking to another woman anyway.”

“I have to work,” she says. “And while I completely advocate the safety of sex workers, I’m not going to lose my only paying job over it.”

“I won’t be able to go,” Combeferre says. “I’ve got an organic chemistry lab this afternoon.”

“Courf and I will head down, then,” he says.

“You should take Grantaire,” Jehan says quickly. “He’s free tonight and he knows that part of town.”

He’s not sure what’s possessed him to say any of that, and the look Grantaire is giving him implies that Jehan has crossed several lines in volunteering him for this particular duty. He’s about to recant his statement and suggest that maybe taking Grantaire isn’t such a good idea, but he changes his mind. He’ll stand by what he said. Maybe he’s still feeling stubborn from his argument with Mont, but he’s not in the mood to back down right now and perhaps he’s gotten sick of the way Grantaire looks at Enjolras without ever having the nerve to do anything about it. Jehan knows that Grantaire has built up too many walls and keeps too many secrets and doesn’t let people see how beautiful his soul really is. He also knows that Grantaire won’t let down those walls without a fight, and if anything might make Grantaire talk, Jehan thinks it might be this.

“Are you really?” Enjolras asks, turning to Grantaire. “Familiar with that part of town, I mean.”

Grantaire shrugs, but the movement is stiff. “There are some indie art galleries down in that area that I go to.”

“You two should go,” Jehan says. He refuses to look at Grantaire, refuses to acknowledge that he’s pressing for this without Grantaire’s permission (and possibly even against his wishes).

Enjolras looks across the table. “Is that okay with you, Grantaire?”

There’s a long pause and Jehan still refuses to look at his friend, though if the dangerous look Eponine gives him is any indication, Grantaire is livid.

“Fine,” Grantaire says eventually. The word is ripped from his mouth as though he doesn’t have the power to deny Enjolras anything—which, Jehan thinks, is probably true.

Enjolras smiles at him and starts making plans.

Once plans are set and the conversation has turned, Jehan can’t ignore the way that Grantaire is looking at him any longer and he quietly excuses himself from the table, knowing that Grantaire will follow him. Grantaire clearly has something to say and Jehan’ll hear him out, but he doesn’t think this is a conversation they should be having in front of everyone else. He leaves the café and waits off to the side where he knows his friends won’t be able to see him from the window.

Grantaire joins him a moment later. He grabs Jehan’s scarf like a leash and leads him around the corner into the alley where he pins him against the wall.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Grantaire demands.

Jehan shoves him away. He’s in no mood to be shoved around and snapped at. “I stand by what I did,” he says.

“Seriously, Jehan? Seriously? You _know_ why I don’t want to do this, you _know—_ ”

“I know that this will give you and Enjolras a chance to see each other as people,” he says. “I know this will give him a chance to see you as something more than a drinking problem, and isn’t that what you want?”

“I don’t want anything from him!” Grantaire snaps. “I don’t want him to know anything about this. I don’t need him or anything from him.”

“I’m sorry, R,” he says, his voice colder than it normally is, but he really doesn’t care right now. “I’m afraid I’ve hit my bullshit tolerance for the day, so do me the favor and don’t act like I don’t know how you feel about him.” He takes a step away from the wall and brushes off his clothes. “Look, you don’t have to tell him anything you don’t want to,” he says, “and I know you won’t tell him anything you don’t want to because I know you and you’re a stubborn fucker. But because I know you, I also know that Enjolras is important to you and if you want to do anything more than fantasize about him, you need to start letting some walls down before you two drive each other away.”

Grantaire takes a step back and drags both his hands through his hair. Jehan feels a little sympathy for him, knowing the difficulty of the position he’s just put Grantaire in. Were he feeling a little more charitable, he’d say something to make this better, but at the moment, nothing comes to mind.

“This is going to be a fucking disaster,” Grantaire says. “And don’t think that just because I’m going along with this means I’m not pissed as hell at you for volunteering me in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, it seems that pissing off people I care about is all I’m good for today,” he says, suddenly feeling weary. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to head back in. If you want a few hours to yourself before going downtown with Enjolras, I’ll make your excuses for you. Just…just try not to sabotage yourself because you’re afraid of having something good in your life, all right? You deserve as much happiness as the rest of us and I’d hate to see you not get it because you’re afraid.”

He turns to leave.

“I’m not afraid,” Grantaire says to Jehan’s retreating back.

Jehan pauses and looks at his oldest friend over his shoulder. “Good,” he says. “I hope it stays that way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not have words to tell you how much trouble this chapter gave me--honestly, the number of times I wrote and re-wrote and edited this thing--so hopefully it turned out okay. I honestly can't tell at this point anymore haha.
> 
> On another note, thanks to the wonderful comments from Maddie (she knows far more about police work than I do), I tweaked the protest scene a teeny-tiny bit to make Enjolras considerably less culpable in everything that happened. Honestly, I changed about two sentences, but the changes are there if you want to go back and read them.
> 
> Thanks as always for the lovely people who kudosed/commented/generally offered support. You guys are seriously the best.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday :)


	27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras and Grantaire go talk to some prostitutes

It’s around six o’clock in the evening when Enjolras drives himself and Grantaire to the area of town where the attacks all seem to be located. Courfeyrac had suggested going earlier in the afternoon, suggesting that they might look less suspicious then, but both he and Grantaire had some things to take care of in the afternoon and this was the earliest that they both had free.

And for the entire car ride, Grantaire has been silent, which unnerving because Grantaire is rarely at a loss for something to say and over the last two weeks, things have been…less antagonistic between them. Somewhere between Grantaire bolstering his confidence after the housing proposal failed and getting arrested together, their relationship has shifted. It’s not what it was—which is fine by Enjolras because what it was was antagonistic and unhealthy and involved a lot of yelling—but he’s not sure what it is now.

It bothers him more than he thinks it should.

“There’s a gallery just up here on the left with a small parking lot,” Grantaire says. “They usually close around now, so no one will mind if we’re parked here.”

“Thanks,” Enjolras says. He spots the gallery and pulls into the parking lot. “How’s your head? You were bleeding pretty badly at the protest.”

“It’s fine,” Grantaire says, unfastening his seat belt. “You can ask Combeferre if you don’t believe me. Shall we go?”

He opens the passenger side door and climbs out of the car before Enjolras can answer.

“Right,” Enjolras says, turning off the car.  He hurries after Granataire. “So do you know where we need to go?”

“There’s a street a few blocks down where some of the sex workers tend to loiter,” Grantaire says. “I don’t think any of the ones who’ve been attacked have been from here specifically, but these women tend to all know each other, and they’ll be aware of anything that’s going on in the area.”

“Thanks for coming, by the way,” Enjolras says. “I know you’re not exactly fond of this whole thing.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Grantaire says.

“I’m not completely blind,” Enjolras says.

“Well, you’re doing a good job of fooling everyone on that count.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “I don’t know why Jehan was so set on having you come with me.”

“Does anyone know why Jehan does what he does?” Grantaire asks.

It’s the first time Enjolras hears Grantaire speak about the poet with anything less than fondness. He shoves his hands in his pockets and wonders what’s really going on here, because it’s obvious Grantaire doesn’t want to be here and isn’t comfortable here—and yet he’s here anyway. “If really isn’t something you’re comfortable with,” he says, “you don’t have to stay. Now that I know where I’m going, I’ll be fine on my own.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “Don’t worry about me,” he says. “Besides, I really don’t think you’ll be fine on your own.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I fully intend to watch you make a fool of yourself with these women. Come on. It’s freezing. I don’t want to be out here all night.”

“I’m not going to make a fool of myself,” he says.

“I’ll believe it when I see it, Apollo.”

“Why do you call me that?”

“What?”

“Apollo,” Enjolras says. “This is the fifth or sixth time you’ve called me that this week.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No,” Enjolras says truthfully. “Not really. It’s better than any number of nicknames Courf has tried to give me over the years. I guess I’m just curious.”

Grantaire shrugs. “I guess I just think it fits you. I can stop if you want.”

“No,” he says. “That’s not necessary.”

He thinks Grantaire smiles a little at that, but the sun has already set and in the dim streetlamp light, it’s hard to tell.

In another two blocks, Grantaire has them turn down a narrow one-way side-street. There are a handful sex workers loitering around together and Enjolras has no idea how they don’t all have hypothermia because it’s the middle of November and it’s freezing and none of them are wearing anything more than tiny little dresses and fishnet stockings and coats that don’t cover any more than their dresses do. Two of the women break away from the rest and approach him and Grantaire.

Or rather, they approach him because Grantaire says, “The stage is yours, Apollo,” and then loiters a few feet behind him. He notices that Grantaire seems far more interested in surveying the other women than dealing the approaching ones. It’s almost as though he’s looking for someone in particular.

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it, though, when the two women are close enough to talk to him.

“Hey there, handsome,” one of the women says. “Care to have a good time?”

“Actually,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you about the attacks that have been happening around this area. My name’s Enjolras.”

The women exchange a look that he can’t quite interpret. “You’re not another one of those preachers are you?” the one with blue eyes says.

“We really don’t need another man telling us that these attacks are punishments for our sins,” says the red-headed woman.

“No, no,” Enjolras says, though he can feel his temper spike at the thought of a man of God condemning these women instead of offering assistance. He’s not particularly religious but he knows enough about the Bible to know that Jesus spent a good deal of the New Testament hanging around with prostitutes. “I’m part of an activist group, we’re trying to bring media attention to the attacks. We’re hoping that once the media knows—”

“Oh honey,” Blue Eyes says, “the media already knows. The police already know. They just don’t give a damn.”

“That’s what we’re trying to change,” Enjolras says. “You deserve to work in safety—and just because everyone else is too judgmental to help doesn’t mean I am.”

The women exchange another look and Enjolras can’t quite shake the feeling that they’re somehow laughing at him.

“Look, sugar,” the Red-Head says, “we appreciate your concern but you really shouldn’t worry your pretty little head about us.”

“If you want, we can make you feel so good you’ll forget all about these attacks.”

“It’s worked on the other men who come down here—they don’t even mention the attacks.”

“It even worked on one of the preachers.”

“What?” Enjolras says, glancing between both women.

“We’ll even let your friend watch,” she says. “On the house because you’re both so cute.”

Enjolras feels his face flush as he suddenly makes sense of what they’re saying. “You—what? No, no. That’s not—I’m not—No. I’m not interested—I don’t—”

He can hear Grantaire laughing at him and he glances over his shoulder.

_Help me_ he mouths.

Grantaire tries to pull a straight face—and fails—but he steps up all the same. “Sorry, ladies,” he says, “but women don’t really do it for me. And I don’t really think they do it for my friend either. He’s more of, well, let’s just say he’s in love with his books.”

Blue Eyes laughs. “Such a shame. You’re much better looking than the usual crowd we get around here.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Grantaire says.

Both women snicker a little to themselves—Enjolras knows they’re laughing at him and he knows he’s still blushing and he feels like an idiot—and head back to the other women.

“See?” Grantaire says. “You did make a fool of yourself. And try not to look so mortified. It’s their job to proposition you for sex. Also now would be a good time for you to admit that I was right, Enjolras. Goodness knows this’ll probably be the only time.”

“I was just trying to help,” he says defensively. He shoves his hands in his pocket to keep himself from crossing his arms over his chest because he refuses to act like a petulant child.

“And Eponine and I have told you from the beginning that this isn’t the best way to go about doing this,” he says.

“So how would you do it then?”

Grantaire signs and runs his hand through his hair. He hesitates for a moment, then turns to the women and calls, “Hey, Sandra!”

A young woman—brown hair, maybe five or six years older than Enjolras is—looks up at them. She glances at the other women around and then steps forward a little.

“How do you know my real name?” she says.

Grantaire steps forward so that he’s in the light of street lamp. “What?” he says. “You don’t recognize me?”

Enjolras frowns a little, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Oh my stars,” Sandra says slowly, closing the distance between them. “Is that you, Remy?  I hardly recognized you—which is nonsense, of course. You look just like your mama.”

Grantaire gives her a little half-smile. “It’s good to see you, too.”

“What are you doing here? I didn’t even know you were in the city. You—you’re not here looking for some fun tonight, are you?” She punches his arm and from the way he winces, Enjolras suspects that Sandra can pack quite the punch. “Shame on you—your mama would be horrified.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Grantaire says. “I’m an art student at one of the universities in the city.”

“You always did paint so beautifully. I remember that copy of that Starry Night painting that you did on your mama’s cast that one time.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Anyway, I came down here with my friend, Enjolras.” He waves Enjolras forward. “He runs a sort of social activist group on campus and we’re all kind of horrified by the attacks that have been happening and we want to know what we can do to help.”

“Did you hear about Carmen? Dead and abandoned in a warehouse for nearly two weeks before anyone found her. It’s absolutely awful. No one even cares.”

“We care,” Grantaire says.

Normally, this would be the point in the conversation where Enjolras would step in. It’s the perfect opportunity to explain himself and what he’s trying to do, but he’s rather fascinated by Grantaire at the moment. He looks at ease, if not a little self-deprecating, and he’s handling himself and the situation remarkably. Enjolras knows he has a natural inclination to lead, but he also knows he wouldn’t be half as effective as Grantaire is right now.

“We’re all nervous,” she says. “There’s not any sort of rhyme or reason to which girls get attacked and which don’t. A lot of us have started carrying pepper spray or switchblades. One of the girls even keeps this little pea shooter of a pistol with her now. I mean, we’ve all had to deal with guys who get a little too grabby and a little too rough—well, you remember what it’s like, R, I’m sure—”

Enjolras casts a concerned look at Grantaire, looking for some clarification of that statement, but Grantaire gives nothing away and Sandra keeps speaking.

“But this is so much more than that. We’re all scared but it’s not like most of us can stop or quit at this point. This has never been the safest job out there, but I’ve never been scared like this before either. And some of the girls—they’ve got kids and family to take care of. They’re terrified about what’ll happen to their families if something happens to them.”

“Do you know who’s doing this?” Grantaire asks.

Sandra gives him a look. “Don’t you go looking for who’s doing this, R. You’ll only get yourself killed.”

“We’re not interested in solving crimes,” he says. “We just want to keep you and the others safe. Just because you’re sex workers doesn’t mean you’re less than human.”

Sandra laughs. It’s a biting sort of sound. Enjolras is pretty sure he’s heard the same laugh from Grantaire before. “You might be the only man on the planet who thinks that,” she says. “There’s really not much you can do.”

“The police—”

“The police are bad for business, R,” she says. “You know that. We have bills to play. Most of us—this is the only job we’ve got.”

“I know,” Grantaire says. He hesitates for a second, then says, “Promise me you’ll let me know if you can think of anything we can do to help.”

“R, honey—”

“Promise me,” he says. “Do you have your cell phone with you? I’m going to give you my number. And Enjolras’s here. If you need anything, if you think of anything that could help, you’ll call one of us, okay?”

Sandra pulls out her phone from between her breasts and hands it to Grantaire, who passes if off to Enjolras once he’s added his number. Enjolras adds his own and then Combeferre’s, Courfeyrac’s, and Bahorel’s for good measure. He labels each number as “Grantaire’s Friend.”

“Your mama would be proud of you, R,” she says when Enjolras hands her phone back.

“Thanks,” he says. “We’ll get out of our hair now.”

She kisses him on the cheek and heads back to the others. Grantaire turns to head back to the car and Enjolras follows.

“I hope you don’t mind that I gave her your phone number,” Grantaire says when they’re halfway up the block.

“I was the one who put my number in,” he says. “I added a few other numbers in there, too. Just for good measure. You handled that much better than I could have. I was impressed.”

Grantaire gives a little laugh and doesn’t say anything else as they walk back to the car.

Once they’re in the car, the silence between them is heavy and Enjolras clicks through radio stations as he drives, looking for something other than ads to fill the silence.

In the passenger’s seat, Grantaire just stares out the window. After a while, he reaches over and stills Enjolras’s hand at the radio.

“You can ask, you know,” he says. “I know you want to know.”

“Ask what?”

“Ask how I knew that girl’s name,” he says.

“It’s none of my business.”

“But you want to know.”

Enjolras sighs. “I do,” he admits. He’s kind of horrified with himself that he wants to know because it’s none of his business.

“Sandra used to live with her older sister, back in the neighborhood I grew up in,” Grantaire says. “Her sister worked with my mom.”

Enjolras doesn’t say anything because he knows there’s an addendum coming.

“Her sister and my mom were both prostitutes,” Grantaire says eventually.

“Oh,” Enjolras says. He feels a little sick, remembering the accusations he once slung at Grantaire about his associations with sex workers.

“Most of the women I knew growing up were prostitutes,” he says. He talks with a strange sort of urgency, like now that he’s confessing this he feels the need to confess _all_ of it. “All of them, really, except my teachers at school and Eponine’s mom. I used to listen to other guys at school talk about all the hookers and whores they were going to bang and I just…” Grantaire leans his head back against the head rest and closes his eyes. “My old man, he was her pimp. She fell in love with him when she was really young, like seventeen or eighteen and then she got pregnant and he didn’t leave her like she expected him to—that’s just what guys in my neighborhood do, you know? If a girl gets pregnant, it’s not his fault and it’s certainly not his responsibility. So when my dad just didn’t up and leave her—she thought he was special. She thought that meant he actually gave a fuck about her.

“He didn’t, for the record. After she had me, things were good for a while but then money was tight and he started whoring her out—using me as leverage to make her do what he wanted. So she did, because she didn’t want to see me get hurt. Of course, a lot of good that did, because when she came home, he’d beat the shit out of her because she’d been with another man and then if he was still angry he’d round on me just because I was there and wasn’t fast enough to get away.”

“Why didn’t she leave?” Enjolras asks, mostly because he feels the need to say something, anything because if he doesn’t he’ll keep thinking about the horrors Grantaire must have witnessed as a child.

“Where would she have gone? She was young, she had a kid, she had no job experience. My old man is a nasty son of a bitch, but he kept a roof over our heads.” He sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “I used to tell her to run away. All the time when I was a kid. I didn’t know what was really going on until I was ten or eleven when my dad made me watch and then everything was abundantly clear, but I knew she was miserable and I knew my dad hated her. I just wanted my mom to be happy, so I’d tell her to leave me behind and runaway—and when I was fourteen, she did. In her own way. I came home from school to find her dead in the bathroom. She’d overdosed on something—I never found out what.”

Enjolras is horrified. He knows that he doesn’t come from the ideal home and he knows he has his hang ups from his childhood, but next to what Grantaire grew up with, his own childhood sounds like Disney World. He doesn’t know what to say—and he prides himself on being good with words and it’s to his shame that he can’t think of anything to say now—so he reaches over and puts a hand on Grantaire’s leg, trying to silently offer support or condolences or sympathy. He’s not sure what he’s trying to communicate, just that he is.

Grantaire’s hand curls around his own.

“It’s fucked up,” Grantaire says. “I know what those women deal with on a daily basis, and I know that the cops don’t give shit about them. Hell, the number of times the neighbor’s called in domestic violence calls to the police—they knew my mom, by that point. Picked her up for solicitation a time or two, and they didn’t care what happened to her. They didn’t care what happened to me. She was a whore and I was a bastard and nobody gave a fuck—and no one gives a fuck now. Two women are _dead_ because of whatever the hell is going on but no one cares.”

Enjolras squeezes Grantaire’s hand. “Does anyone else know about this?”

“Eponine,” he says. “My mom used to see johns at her parents’ motel. And Jehan found out a few years ago. I’d taken some ecstasy with him and blabbed the whole story. I haven’t touched that shit since, I don’t care how good Jehan says it makes him feel.”

“You don’t have to worry about me telling anyone,” Enjolras says.

“I wouldn’t have told you if I thought you’d run your mouth off to everyone.”

Enjolras nods. “Thank you,” he says, after a minute or so of silence. He still hasn’t moved his hand away from Grantaire’s leg.

“For what?”

“For trusting me with this.”

“Shit, Apollo, I don’t need you to go all sappy on me. I don’t need or want your pity.”

“You have my sympathy,” Enjolras says, “not my pity. Stuff like that, it leaves scars and I understand that. If you…if you ever want to talk, or anything, my door is always open to my friends.”

“And are we friends, Apollo?”

“I consider you my friend,” he says. “For what it’s worth.”

Grantaire is silent for a long moment, before quietly saying, “Oh.”

The rest of the drive back to Grantaire’s apartment is in silence, but Enjolras doesn’t move his hand from Grantaire’s grasp the entire time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being awesome everyone :) Your continued support/comments/kudos/awesome-vibes never fail to make my day. I love you all <3
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Valentine's Day (id est Friday)


	28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which the author discovers once again that she's really bad at summarizing transitional chapters)

On good days, Grantaire listens to an old mix CD of classical music that Jehan gave him when he graduated high school. It’s eclectic, as is most of what Jehan touches, but Grantaire loves it—the perfect mix of Rachmaninoff, Steve Reich, and a few Eric Whitacre choral arrangements for contrast. It’s the perfect blend of music to make him tune out other distractions and allow him to focus on painting.

He’s still listening to the CD—loud enough that the neighbors would complain if they were the sort of people who complained about things—when Eponine comes home from work. He’s cleaning out paintbrushes in the sink and hollers a greeting to her over the music when she walks in.

Her first order of business is to turn down the volume on their speakers. “You’ll be deaf by the time you’re thirty if you keep listening to stuff this loud,” she says, joining him in the kitchen.

“Odds are I’ll have liver failure by then too,” he says, turning a little to smile at her. “And what would be the point in living a life with no music and no booze?”

She shakes her head. “My dad always said you’d be dead before twenty-five anyway.”

“Always with the high standards, your dad,” he says dryly.

“Good painting day, then?” she says. “You normally don’t bust out the classics unless you’re really feeling it.”

“Very good,” he says.

Eponine is silent for a moment as she pours herself a glass of raspberry lemonade from the fridge. She takes a sip and then says, “So are you going to tell me what’s had you so moony-eyed these past few days or are you going to make me guess?”

He rubs the brush with his fingers gently, working out a stubborn bit of paint that clings to the bristles. “I haven’t been moony-eyed.”

“You’re kidding me,” she says. “Ever since Friday, you’ve been strangely cheery—and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that especially considering I expected you to be in an awful mood when you got home—but yesterday I caught you _whistling_ , Grantaire. Color me concerned.”

Maybe he has been in an unusually good mood since Friday. He hasn’t really paid much thought to it. He shrugs.

“Mmkay,” Eponine says, hopping onto the counter next to him. “This isn’t going to work. Now, either you tell me what happened between you and Enjolras—don’t look at me like that, I’m not an idiot, I know he’s behind this—or I’m going to text Combeferre and have him find out from Enjolras.” She pokes him in the ribs. “Now, out with it.”

“He, uh, he may have held my hand,” Grantaire says slowly. Shit. Enjolras held his fucking hand. Saying it out loud makes it feel considerably more real.

“You’re kidding,” Eponine says.

He’s a little offended by the disbelief in her tone. “Oh, come on. I’m not that repulsive. It’s not completely ridiculous to think that someone would want to hold my hand.”

She rolls her eyes. “My disbelief has more to do with my surprise at him showing human emotion than anything else.”

“Besides,” Grantaire says, “it wasn’t romantic hand holding or anything like that. It was more like _I’m sorry you had a shitty childhood, let me put my hand on you because I don’t know what I’m doing_  hand holding.”

“You told him about growing up?” she asks. “What did you say?”

“I told him about my mom,” he says. “And what she did. I…it seemed right. To tell him, I mean.” He’s not going to mention that he only fessed up because Jehan had been all cryptic about letting down walls and Jehan’s instincts when it comes to things like this usually turn out to be right. He hadn’t come clean because he was being brave or anything. He did it because he was scared that he would ruin whatever tenuous relationship he’d been able to build with Enjolras.

“What’d he say?” she asks.

“He was good about it,” he says. “A little sappy, tell-me-all-your-feelings maybe. I dunno. He called me his friend.”

“Friends, huh?” she says. “I suppose that’s better than antagonistic shouting partners.”

He rolls her eyes. “We were never that bad.”

“I think Bahorel filmed one of your shouting matches at the Musain on his phone,” she says. “I’m going to make you watch it.” She hops off the counter and kisses him on the cheek. “Combeferre is on his way over. Is that okay with you?”

“Ep, this is your place. You can pretty much do whatever you want. As long as you guys aren’t putting on a porno, I won’t complain.”

“We haven’t even had sex.”

“Yet.”

She punches his arm. “What Combeferre and I do is none of your business.”

“Oh yeah, like it’s none of my business that you two were totally making out in here when you were allegedly watching _A Beautiful Mind_ last week.”

“Who have you told?” she says.

“I haven’t told anyone,” he says. “I don’t need to. You two are completely obvious. I’m pretty sure Courfeyrac has already started a betting pool about when you’re both going to finally admit that you’re actually dating each other.”

“Oh, I’ll kill him,” she mutters. “Or maybe I’ll just let Combeferre do it. He’s scary when he’s pissed.”

“Oh I believe it,” Grantaire says. “Do you want me to clear out so you and Combeferre can be _alone_?”

“If by alone you mean with him and Enjolras and Courfeyrac, then by all means.”

“Wait, they’re coming too?”

She smirks at him. “It’s a bit different now that your Enjolras is involved, isn’t it?”

“He’s not my anything. Why are all three of them coming?”

"Because they're all conjoined at the hip?" She shrugs. “Ferre is coming because we like spending time together, and I think Enjolras wants to get some ABC stuff done, so that’s why he and Courf are coming.”

“What? Is our apartment their new clubhouse?”

“If you mind,” she says, “I can probably reroute them over to Combeferre and Enjolras’s place.”

“No,” he says quickly before cursing himself. Great. Now he looks desperate for Enjolras’s company. “It’s fine if they come here.”

Enjolras and company arrive a few minutes later, ladened with pizza boxes, which somehow get unloaded on Grantaire once they enter the apartment.

“What is this?” he asks.

“That, my friend,” Courfeyrac says, “is gourmet pizza. Food of the gods.”

He rolls his eyes before dumping the boxes on the kitchen table. “What I meant was why do you guys have it?’

“Courf got it,” Combeferre says with a tone of slight disbelief. “For free.”

Enjolras shakes his head. “I don’t know how he does it.”

“Oh come on,” Courfeyrac says. He flips open the top box and pulls out a slice of some sort of garlic-chicken-cilantro masterpiece. “It’s not that hard.”

“People don’t give out food like this for free,” Grantaire says.

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “I just happened to be passing the pizza place and they just happened to have a massive cancellation for a catered event—prepaid and non-refundable—and they were getting rid of the pizza so I asked what happened. Apparently, it was for someone’s rehearsal dinner for their wedding but it turns out that the groom was totally sleeping with one of the bride’s maids _and_ the best man, so yeah. That wedding isn’t going to happen—which is a shame because polyamory is totally an option as long as all parties are consenting—but it means free pizza for us!”

Grantaire just shakes his head, which seems to be the reaction of both Combeferre and Enjolras as well, and Enjolras comes over to claim a slice himself.

This is the first time Grantaire and Enjolras have seen each other since Friday night and Grantaire feels a strange sort of tension between them, like neither of them knows if they’re supposed to bring up Friday night or what it actually means for the pair of them to be friends. Enjolras offers up a faltering sort of smile like a peace offering and takes a slice of pizza.

“You’ve, uh, you’ve got a spot on your shirt,” Enjolras says, gesturing with his pizza towards Grantaire’s shirt.

He pulls out his t-shirt a little. It’s an old The Offspring shirt that he’s had since he was sixteen and it’s already riddled with holes and paint stains. Sure enough there’s a new bright red stain across the front. “Would you look at that,” he says. “I was painting earlier. I didn’t realize I’d gotten some on me.”

He hopes there’s not paint in his hair, which has happened before.

“I’d forgotten you paint,” Enjolras says.

“Yup.”

Grantaire is saved from the land of awkward conversation when his phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket to see he has a message from Jehan.

_You home_?

He hastily taps out his answer. _Yeah. Eponine and courferrenj are in tow._

Jehan’s response follows almost immediately. _I’m coming over_.

In the time it’d taken to text Jehan, Enjolras has moved on to a new topic of conversation with Courfeyrac—something about a legal studies class that sounds absolutely wretched—but the new conversation saves both of them from making awkward conversation with each other.

“Jehan’s on his way over,” he announces off-handedly. He doesn’t miss the look of interest on Courfeyrac’s face as he heads back to his room to change shirts.

Jehan has already arrived by the time Grantaire comes out of his room, which means he must have already been on his way when he texted Grantaire because he doesn’t exactly live close to campus or to Jehan and Mont’s apartment. Jehan’s waiting for Grantaire near the kitchen table and the pizza boxes—just far enough from the others that he won’t feel obligated to talk to them—and he seems to wilt with relief when he sees Grantaire.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“Just got off the phone with my dad,” he says.

“Ah. Do you want something to drink?” He knows what talking to his dad does to Jehan and he can see that Jehan’s hands are already shaking.

He shakes his head. “It’s just—ugh, it’s just shit, R,” he says. “He wants me to come home for Thanksgiving. I haven’t been home since I started college, and I haven’t seen him or my mom since parents’ weekend last year.”

Grantaire doesn’t know the details of what happened at parents’ weekend last year because Jehan refused to talk about it, but it was just after he and Montparnasse started dating and the weekend was bad enough that Jehan threw up most of what he ate for about a week afterwards.

“Why does he want you back now?” he asks. “I thought he was fine leaving you alone for a change.”

Jehan shakes his head. “It’s because of the bail money,” he says. “You know how my dad is—he never does anything for anyone without a list of caveats and recompenses and I promised him that I’d do what he wants—and he wants me home for Thanksgiving. And shit, R, it’s not even a normal Thanksgiving. It’s not just dinner with him and my mom—they’ve been invited to some swank dinner thing. Some sort of fundraiser dinner? I don’t even know and I don’t know why he wants me there, because it’s not like he’s proud of me or my accomplishments—hell, it’s not like he even _likes_ me, R, and I’m already panicking over this and it’s still like two weeks away—”

“Wait,” Courfeyrac says from across the room. “Is your family going to the Arthur L. Shaftsbury Foundation Dinner?”

Jehan leans against the edge of the table and rubs the back of his neck. “I think that’s what my dad called it.”

Courfeyrac beams at him. “It won’t be so awful,” he says. “You can hang with me and Enj the whole time. Oh! And my sister will be there. You'll get to meet her, you’ll love her.”

“Your families are going?” Jehan says, looking between Courfeyrac and Enjolras. “You’re both going to be there?”

There’s a hint of hope in his voice and Grantaire can feel himself relaxing a little because if Courfeyrac and Enjolras are around to watch Jehan’s back, then this dinner might not be as much of a disaster as it could be.

Enjolras nods. “My family goes every year,” he says. “It’s not the most enjoyable experience, but ever since Courf’s family started going, it’s been tolerable at least.”

“Sheesh, Enj,” Courfeyrac says. “Don’t be such a buzzkill. The crowd is pretty stuffy, but my sister and I always have a good time.”

“That’s because you and your sister treat the whole thing like a joke,” Enjolras says.

“It is a joke,” he says. “It’s just a bunch of old rich people trying to out-snob each other. Oh! We can add Jehan’s dad to the drinking game!”

“What drinking game?” Jehan asks as Enjolras groans.

“I thought you said you were going to stop that,” Enjolras says.

“No such thing,” Courfeyrac says. “My sister and I started this drinking game for Enj’s dad—basically, every time he outright ignores Enjolras, which is alarmingly frequent, we all take a drink. We can add your dad to the mix. Every time he’s an asshole, we’ll all take a drink.”

Jehan offers a wobbly smile. “If that’s the case, we’ll all be drunk before the first course.”

Courfeyrac laughs. “I promise, we won’t let you be completely miserable at the dinner, okay? Even if we have to get astoundingly drunk in order to do so.”

“You sure I’m not going to be a bother?” he asks. He tucks his hands into the sleeves of his sweaters, like a turtle retreating into its shell. “I’m really no good at social events like this.”

“Not a bother at all,” he says.

He’s so sincere that Grantaire can practically see the tension dissolve from Jehan’s body and Grantaire is grateful for it. He’s supported Jehan through countless shitty encounters with his dad and none of them end well for Jehan, but Enjolras can be rabidly protective and Courfeyrac is still so smitten with Jehan that Grantaire can hope that maybe this Thanksgiving won’t turn into the disaster it has all the potential to be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I had really hoped that I could post a more shippy chapter today but alas, that is not how the stars aligned. (The next chapter has shippy elements, and the one after that is probably the opposite of shippy, so I suppose today's offering might be a good compromise?)
> 
> Anyway, thank you all so much for your support and comments and kudos and general awesomeness. I love you all :)
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday


	29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac finds Jehan at the Musain

“Care if I join you?” Courfeyrac asks Jehan, approaching him in the Musain.

The Musain is quiet tonight, which doesn’t surprise Courfeyrac at all because the weather outside is absolutely atrocious and besides, November is always an awful month as far as school work is concerned. It’s as though all the professors conspire together to make the month as miserable as they can. Most people, he assumes, are holed up in their apartments or dorm rooms or maybe the library trying to get projects and papers done, but Courfeyrac likes studying at the Musain. He likes being able to snack while he works and he can usually find at least one of his friends who will consent to study with him there.

Jehan looks up from his laptop and thick literature book and smiles. “Of course,” he says.

“You look exhausted,” Courfeyrac says.

“I have a paper due before Thanksgiving, one due after Thanksgiving, and then another paper and a creative writing portfolio due before finals week.”

“Shit, man,” he says. “Do I need to buy you another coffee? I’m pretty sure Enjolras runs off caffeine around this time of year. I can text him to find out how he does it.”

Jehan smiles, which makes him look a little less exhausted. “I am well caffeinated,” he says, nodding to the cup next to his book.

“What are you working on?”

“American literary history.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It’s not so bad,” he says. “Well, okay, it kind of is. All the English majors have to take three literary history courses and they’re all survey courses, so you never get to sink your teeth into any of the good stuff. We only spent two weeks on American Romanticism—and that’s not nearly enough because Romanticism was such a wide movement. It covers everything from Poe and Hawthorne to Thoreau and Emerson and—I’m boring you now, aren’t I?”

“No, no,” Courfeyrac says. “Okay, well, maybe a little, but no more than Combeferre does when he gets on one of his public health soap boxes. And, for the record, I remember American Romanticism from high school. I really liked Emerson.”

“Everyone likes Emerson,” he says. “He was like the forerunner to hippies, and everyone likes hippies. Free love and drugs and all that.”

Courfeyrac opens up his law book and pulls a highlighter out of his pocket. He likes to travel light. “Are you working on one of your papers now?”

“Trying,” he says. “I’m supposed to write about T.S. Eliot—for the record, being assigned paper topics instead of being able to pick them yourself sucks—and I hate Eliot. I mean, ‘Prufrock’ isn’t so bad, but I have to write about ‘The Wasteland’ and I don’t really appreciate poets who are deliberately obscure.”

“Who’s Prufrock?” Courfeyrac asks.

“It’s a poem,” he says. “Not a person. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ _Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherized upon a table._ I used to quote that to Grantaire all the time in high school whenever we’d be leaving together to go somewhere. He said it wasn’t remotely romantic.”

“Well, yeah,” Courfeyrac says. “You just talked about people being knocked out on a table.”

“At least it’s etherized and not euthanized.”

Courfeyrac laughs and shakes his head. “You have an odd definition of romance.”

Jehan smiles at him, but then his phone buzzes. Courfeyrac watches the subtle play of emotions across Jehan’s face as he reads the message and types out a reply.

“Who was that?” he asks.

“Hmm?” Jehan says, looking up from his phone. “Oh, it’s just Mont. I told him I’m trying to work on a paper, but he keeps texting.”

“What about? I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. I don’t want to pry. I’m just obscenely nosey.”

Jehan shakes his head. “It’s nothing serious. He just wants to know where I am, when I’ll be done, that sort of thing.”

Courfeyrac frowns a little. He’s dated people that possessive and clingy before—one boyfriend from a few years back stands out particularly—and he always hated it. He’s never been comfortable with the idea that he has to report his movements to another person. “Are you okay with all that?”

“He’s normally not like this,” he says. “I don’t know. Things have been…things have been different since he came back, you know?”

“From his week-long rendezvous with who-knows-what?”

Jehan nods. “He’s been stressed and worried and he hasn’t told me what happened—which is fine, because usually I don’t want to know those kinds of things in the first place—but he’s just been different lately.”

“Like bad different?”

His phone buzzes again and Jehan pauses to send another text. He sets his phone aside. “It’s not bad, necessarily,” he says. “It’s just different. I think he’s gotten a little paranoid, and that’s why he’s always texting me and checking up on me.”

“Does it bother you, though?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes. He tried to tell me—hold on,” he says as his phone goes off again. This time his reply takes longer. “Sorry about that. Anyway, he tried to tell me that he doesn’t want me hanging around you and the rest of the group, and that was annoying. We fought about that.”

Courfeyrac nods. “I remember you telling me about that last week. Is he okay with it now?”

“No,” he says. “Not really. I think he’s more comfortable with it if R’s around too, but I can’t expect Grantaire to escort me to everything, you know? He—”

Jehan sighs when his phone buzzes again. He frowns this time as he taps out his response.

“Do you need to go?” Courfeyrac asks. “I’ll walk you home if you want.”

He shakes his head. “He knows I’m trying to work on this paper and one of his friends is over, so I know I’m not going to get anything done there.”

“Am I distracting you?”

“No,” he says. “I’ve been here for a few hours already and you’re pleasant company.”

Courfeyrac smiles. “I do what I can.”

“I don’t mean to complain about my relationship to you,” he says. “I know it’s kind of shitty to do that to people.”

“Hey, if you need to talk, you need to talk,” he says. “I won’t judge.” He doesn’t add that he’s already concerned about him and Montparnasse and that his conversation is doing nothing to allay those concerns. But it’s better to be kept in the circle than be uniformed.

“I just wish things were back the way they used to be, you know?” Jehan says. “And it doesn’t help that money is tight again.”

“Did you have to call your dad for rent money again?”

“You heard about that?” He shakes his head without waiting for Courfeyrac to respond. “He needed help covering rent again for November, and I had some in savings on top of what my dad gives me for living expenses each month and that was enough to help him cover it. In return since I don't have my usual allowance, he’s been covering all my usual expenses this month, but things are tight and sometimes it’s weird to ask him for money even though I know he doesn’t care what I spend it on.”

Courfeyrac frowns again. “Jehan, I know this isn’t any of my business, but are you sure things are okay between you two?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just the texts and the sort of controlling behavior and definitely the controlling the money thing—those usually aren’t good signs.”

“He’s not using the money to…to keep me in line or anything,” Jehan says a little stiffly. “I know what that looks like. My dad’s been using that leash on me and my mom ever since I can remember.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says. “I’m your friend, that’s all. I worry.”

“You don’t have to worry. It’s—”

His phone buzzes and he sighs again. Courfeyrac can see the frustration flit across his face.

“Do you mind if Mont and his friend join us?”

He shakes his head even though the last thing he wants to do is watch Montparnasse and Jehan together. “Not at all.”

Jehan taps out his reply. “Sorry about that. He was just getting sort of pushy about me being here alone with another guy,” he says. “It might help, once he’s here, if you mention that date with that girl that you went on. I haven’t told him you’re bi, so he might relax a little about me spending time with you if he thinks you’re straight.”

Courfeyrac wants to shake Jehan a little because trying to convince your boyfriend that your gay friends are straight so you can continue to spend time with them is _never a good sign_ , but he doesn’t think Jehan will respond well to that and he doesn’t want to scare Jehan off. Instead, he sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “I can straighten myself up a bit, if you think that’ll help.”

Jehan smiles at him—one of his pure, brilliant smiles that always makes Courfeyrac’s stomach flip around a little. “You’re the best, Courf. I know you’re not exactly Mont’s biggest fan. I really appreciate this.”

Courfeyrac forces himself to laugh. “What are friends for?” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah! This story has crossed the 200 Kudos mark! I am seriously SO flattered, you guys :) Thank you all so much for your continued support of this story. You're all seriously the coolest people ever.
> 
> The next chapter will be up on Friday :)


	30. Chapter Thirty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan runs into some trouble with one of Mont's friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: homophobic language, anxiety attacks, and rape threats
> 
> (In other words, this is not a happy chapter, so brace yourselves.)

Jehan sits on the middle of the bed with his laptop open in front of him and a notebook resting on his knee. He can feel the beginnings of a headache behind his eyes, and the noise coming from the living room isn’t helping. The walls aren’t exactly thick and Mont’s friends are over—drinking and smoking and doing whatever it is that they normally do when they’re giddy off their own success. He doesn’t know what they’ve done to be in such high spirits—and quite frankly, he doesn’t want to know because sometimes Mont’s money making schemes are more than Jehan can stomach—but they’re being loud and crass and Jehan is trying to finish a few poems that he was meant to have done yesterday. And if he doesn’t get them done and emailed to his creative writing class by tonight for the workshop tomorrow, he’s going to lose a hefty chunk of points.

And with the way he can feel hollowness swelling up inside his gut, putting pressure on his lungs and his stomach and making him desperate for something or someone to hold onto, he knows that losing points for this class will do him no good. Because he should have gotten this done _ages_ ago anyway, and he doesn’t want to use some cop out excuse like “my muse has dried up” because he believes that writing is one part inspiration and ninety-nine parts work, and he really has no excuse for not getting it done other than the hollowness that’s been growing inside of him for the last week, which makes him shaky and unfocused and sick.

Thanksgiving is next week and when he’s honest with himself, he knows that that’s the cause for the hollowness and the shakiness, because even with Courfeyrac’s assurance that he won’t be left alone for this, he still doesn’t want to go, still doesn’t want to spend that much time with his parents.

Part of him is desperate for some weed to smoke—it’ll take the edge off, it’ll calm the nausea—but he can’t because he promised Grantaire that he’d cut back on vices with him, and if Grantaire can cut back on his drinking, surely Jehan can give up a substance that’s not even physically addictive.

He hears someone—he thinks it sounds like Babet, but he’s not sure—laughing from the front room. It’s a sharp, grating sound and Jehan is fine with Mont having his friends over, really he is, but it would be nice if they’d be at least a little considerate of the fact that Jehan is trying to get work done.

It’s another fifteen minutes before his patience breaks.

He climbs off the bed and goes out to the living room, bringing his notebook with him because he wants something to hold on to so his hands don’t shake. He hates conflict. He always has. He blames his dad for it—and yes, he knows there’s only so long you can blame your parents for things like this, but every time he feels like he’s inciting conflict, he can hear his dad yelling at him from the back of his mind and it makes everything worse—but enough is enough and he really does need to get these poems done and Mont is his boyfriend, damn it, and he knows that Jehan’s been feeling anxious and he knows how that can spiral out of control and he should respect the fact that Jehan needs to get work done.

He forces himself to take a deep breath, but that swollen hollowness is still in the way and it keeps his lungs from filling completely.

Mont and his friends are lounging in the living room and the air is thick and heavy with cigarette smoke, which makes him frown because the smell makes him sick and Mont is usually considerate enough to smoke outside. There are two girls—he’s not sure if they’re prostitutes or addicts or both, but neither of them look like they can be much older than eighteen—with them. One of them sits on Babet’s lap, and the other is snuggled up against Gueulemer’s side.

Jehan can tell from their vacant smiles that they’re both high.

“Hey, Mont?” he asks, lingering in their make-shift dinette that divides the living room from the bedroom. “I don’t mean to be a bother, but I’ve got some work I’m trying to get done.” He holds up his notebook and he’s proud of the way his wrist doesn’t tremble. “And I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind keeping it down a little?”

Mont studies him for a moment and then gestures for him to come closer. “You’re all keyed up, babe,” he says. “Come sit with me. You need to relax.”

Jehan shakes his head. “I know I need to relax, but I won’t be able to till I get this done. I don’t mind you having people over, really, I just also really need to finish this.”

“You’re not going to be able to get that done if you’re not relaxed,” Mont says. He pats his thigh, an invitation to sit on his lap. “Sit with me. I’ll get you all nice and relaxed and then you can go finish whatever it is.”

“You’ll get me high and drunk,” Jehan says. “I need to get these poems turned in by tonight. I can’t afford to be high and drunk.”

“Poetry?” Gueulemer says. “You want us to shut up over some fucking poetry?”

Jehan ignores him. He’s gotten good at it over the years. “Look, if you think I’m being a buzzkill, fine. I just thought I’d check—”

Before he can finish his sentence, Gueulemer shoves aside the girl snuggled against him and is on his feet and in Jehan’s face. He’s absolutely massive and Jehan can smell the alcohol on his breath, but Jehan refuses to take a step back. Gueulemer yanks the notebook out of Jehan’s hands.

“Give it back,” Jehan says tonelessly.

“This your poetry, fag?” he asks.

Jehan feels something like shock or disappointment curl up inside him when Mont doesn’t immediately snap at Gueulemer for the slur the way he normally does.

“Just give it back, all right?” he says. He doesn’t like the idea of Gueulemer’s hands on his notebook—which was a gift from Grantaire and is perfect with its unlined pages and its cover hand painted by Grantaire himself—and he wants it back. “I’ll leave you the fuck alone. Just give me the notebook back.”

“Let’s see what the little faggot writes,” Gueulemer says, flipping open the book.

“Gueulemer—”

Gueulemer’s voice overrides his own. “An Ode to Montparnasse’s Cock,” he says dramatically. And even though he’s making every word up, Jehan can feel his face flush. “I love my boyfriend’s cock. I love it in my mouth and I love it in my ass. And I’m such a whiny, needy slut that I’ll beg for it on my knees.”

Jehan glances at Mont. He’s the only one who can stop Gueulemer when he’s like this, but he’s chuckling right along with his friends.

He feels sick.

“And when I beg real pretty for it, he lets me worship his big fat cock with my tongue before he comes all over my face and then I beg to lick—”

Sick of listening to this, Jehan lunges forward to grab his notebook from Gueulemer’s hands, but Gueulemer just shoves him, knocking him back against the table so hard that Jehan is sure he’ll have bruises on his hips and legs come morning. He braces himself against the table and forces back the tears in his eyes. ( _Mont’s high_ , he tells himself. _He’s drunk. That’s why he’s not doing anything. That’s why he’s not standing up for you. He’ll feel like shit about it in the morning, but right now you’re the only one who can stop this._ )

“You’ve had your fun, okay?” Jehan says. “Will you give it back, now?”

Gueulemer flips through the pages. “Should have known you’d write such faggy shit,” he says. “Shouldn’t have expected anything different from you.”

“Just give it back,” he says again.

“It’s bad enough that you’re here queering up the place,” he says. “We don’t need this faggy ass shit making it worse.”

“Gueulemer, don’t—”

But he’s too late. Gueulemer grips the notebook in his meaty hands and deftly rips it in half. He lets one half fall to floor, spits on it, then tears the second half into two pieces.  He drops those pieces too, then digs the heel of his shoe against the torn pages.

“Look,” Gueulemer says, “I made the little girl cry.”

Jehan is on his knees, trying to gather the remnants of his notebook and trying desperately to choke back tears.

“Back off, Gueulemer,” Mont says, pushing himself off the couch and finally coming to Jehan’s defense. He kneels down in front of Jehan and gathers up the torn pages and the ripped cover and thrusts them at Jehan. Jehan clutches them to his chest as Mont takes him by the elbows and pulls him to his feet. “Are you really crying over this, Jehan?” His voice is quiet, but Jehan is sure that everyone in the room is still listening. “It’s just poetry. It’s just a bunch of words scribbled on a page. Pull yourself together. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Shakily, he nods. He feels like his whole body is trembling and his chest is tight and part of him wants to puke, but mostly he just wants to breathe. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He can’t—

“Go back in the room and pull yourself together,” Mont says. His voice is sturdy and calm and even though Jehan has never been fond of people giving him orders, right now he loves Mont for it because it’s something solid that he can hold onto.

Once he’s in their room, he doesn’t pull himself together. Instead he lets himself fall apart. He collapses onto the bad and gasps for air that won’t come to his lung and he gives himself permission to cry because it’s bad enough that Gueulemer is an ass who doesn’t respect other people’s personal property, but it’s so much worse that Mont just watched and laughed and then brushed him off.

He refuses to acknowledge the fact that Mont sounded so much like his dad just then, telling him he was an embarrassment, brushing off his poetry. He’d grown up on those words, but he never thought he’d hear them from Mont.

So he rocks himself back and forth because that’s at least a little bit soothing and right now he feels like he has nothing else.

Once he’s cried himself out, he tries to piece himself back together, but it feels like putting together a puzzle where none of the pieces are actually meant to fit together. His hands shake. He doesn’t feel like his lungs are working properly and his knees feel weak. All he knows is that he can’t stay here right now. It’s fine that Mont is high and drunk. He doesn’t mind that. Mont can make his own choices. But he’s not going to sit here and leave himself as an open target to more of Gueulemer’s abuse. If Mont’s not in a position to keep his friends in line, then Jehan will leave.

He’ll go to Grantaire’s, he decides as he pulls on his coat and grabs a scarf out of his closet. Grantaire won’t mind him just showing up and won’t complain if Jehan ends up staying the night and besides, Grantaire took that book binding class last year and he’ll be able to assess the damage of the ruined notebook.

Now that he thinks about it, though, Courfeyrac’s place might be closer. He told Jehan weeks ago that he lives just a block away from the Musain, which is only a handful of blocks away from Mont’s apartment. Courfeyrac would let him in. Probably wouldn’t even mind if he stayed the night. He—

No. He doesn’t even know if Courfeyrac is home right now. He’s probably out enjoying himself, because that’s what Courfeyrac does. He enjoys himself. Grantaire’s is a safer option, because even if Grantaire isn’t home, Eponine will let him crash there anyway. And if both of them aren’t home, he knows where they hide their spare key and he knows neither of them will be upset to find him at their place when they get home.

Grantaire’s is a safe space. He’ll be welcome there.

He tucks the remains of his notebook into his jacket and shoves his feet into a pair of boots. As soon as he opens the bedroom door, he can hear Gueulemer’s voice, and it’s almost enough to drive him back into his room. He doesn’t want to deal with Gueulemer again and the very idea that Gueulemer will try something again makes bile rise up in the back of his throat.

“Don’t know how you put up with all that crying,” Gueulemer says. “He’s such a whiny little bitch. I know girls who aren’t even that bad.”

“He’s not always crying,” Mont says off-handedly.

“I’d like to rape his tight little ass,” Gueulemer says.

Jehan feels ice in his veins.

“Give him something to really cry about,” he continues. “I could fuck him so hard, he’d run out of tears.”

He waits to hear Mont tell Gueulemer to shut his fucking mouth, to threaten to cut off his balls if ever so much as looks funny at Jehan.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, Mont laughs.

The hollowness inside Jehan’s gut swells at the sound. _Get out. Just get out. Getoutgetoutgetout._

He coughs when he enters the living room to announce his presence. “I’m going to the library to work,” he says. His voice only shakes a little even though he feels like he’s falling apart. “I’ll be back late.”

“You’ll be back by midnight,” Mont says. It’s an order, not a request.

“I’ll be back late,” he says again. He keeps his head held high as he walks across the room, but once the front door is shut behind him, he starts running to Grantaire’s.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, for all your support. The overwhelmingly positive response to this story always brightens my day. You guys are seriously the best.
> 
> The next chapter will be up on Tuesday morning.
> 
> Also, just as a side-note/disclaimer that the depictions of anxiety attacks and other mental health issues are based on my own personal experiences and shouldn't be read as being representative of all experiences.


	31. Chapter Thirty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire recognizes the frantic knocking on the front door.

Grantaire recognizes the frantic, staccato tapping on the front door of the apartment even from his room in the back. So even though he had deliberately chosen to work on his art project in his room instead of in the living room while Enjolras works with Eponine and Courfeyrac about the custody hearing at the end of the month (and while Combeferre hangs around for “moral support”), he rushes out of his room when he hears that knocking because he knows what it means.

He reaches the living room right as Eponine ushers Jehan into the apartment. He’s a mess. Eyes bloodshot and hands shaking. He’s either on the verge of an anxiety attack or he’s coming down from one. Before he can ask what happened—he knows better than to ask what’s wrong because what’s wrong is something triggered Jehan and now he’s standing in Grantaire’s living room on the brink of panic—Jehan has closed the distance between them and he’s thrusting something at Grantaire.

“Can you fix it?” he asks.

It takes a moment for Grantaire to recognize the remains of the notebook he’d given Jehan last Christmas. The notebook itself had been relatively inexpensive—just a simple journal with unlined paper and a plain sturdy cardboard cover that Grantaire could paint over. But now it looks like someone has ripped it—literally ripped it into pieces—and he tries not to lose any of the loose paper.

“What the hell happened?” he asks.

“Can you fix it?” Jehan asks again, his voice desperate. “You took that book binding course last year, didn’t you? You can fix it, right?”

Grantaire is keenly aware that Eponine is still standing near the door, watching them both with narrowed eyes, and that Enjolras and Courfeyrac and Combeferre are staring at them. A quick glance at Courfeyrac confirms what Grantaire already suspected—the man is _pissed_ that someone would upset Jehan like this.

He takes the notebook over to the dinner table and spreads out the pieces. He did take a book binding class last year, and if it was just the spine that was damaged, he’s sure he could fix it. But the front cover and the front half or so of the book is torn in two and the only way he can think of fixing that is with tape.

Jehan watches him sort through the pieces and his arms are folded across his chest and his hands shoved under his arms, which Grantaire knows is to keep them from shaking. He can tell from the rapid rise-and-fall of Jehan’s chest that he’s right on the edge of hyperventilation. One careless move will have him gasping for air.

“I can make you a new one,” he says.

“I want this one. You already gave me this one.” He’s practically pleading.

It's what he figured Jehan would say, though. “I can fix the binding,” he says. “And we can tape the front half back together, but it’s not going to look very pretty.”

“There are coffee and ink stains all over it already,” Jehan says. “It hasn’t looked pretty since you gave it to me. I just want it back in one piece.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says, getting to his feet. He keeps the supplies he used for the book binding class in a box tucked away in his closet. He puts his hands on Jehan’s shoulders and steers him towards a chair. “I’m going to go get a few things, but I want you to sit here and focus on breathing, okay? Eponine’s gonna make you that peppermint tea you like—unless you’d like something stronger?” Jehan shakes his head and Eponine brushes behind him to get into the kitchen to make the promised tea. “Are you gonna be okay here for a minute or two?”

Jehan takes a shaky breath and gives him a shaky nod. If they were alone in the apartment, Grantaire wouldn’t even dream of leaving Jehan alone when he’s like this, because even though Jehan has never had problems with self-harm, Grantaire is always worried that he’ll start. But Eponine is just in the kitchen, and Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre can still see them from the living room.

He’s barely known these men for a month and a half, but he feels perfectly comfortable leaving Jehan in their company. Hell, they can probably take care of Jehan better than he can.

He gently pushes Jehan down into a chair and kisses the crown of his head before hurrying back to his room. Once he’s alone, he swears as he digs through his closet to find the box he needs. He has a half a mind to call up Montparnasse and demand an explanation because he _knows_ that Jehan was home before he came here and he knows that Montparnasse is usually far better at dealing with Jehan’s anxiety—and Montparnasse certainly knows better than to let Jehan walk around the city at night when he’s like this.

But answers will come later because right now it’s more important is to help Jehan calm down, because his anxiety builds on itself and if they don’t stop it now, he’ll be shaky and unsteady for weeks.

He finally finds his box of book binding supplies and he grabs a roll of tape off the desk in his room. When he gets back out to the living room, he finds that Courfeyrac has managed to coax Jehan out of his scarf and coat and is standing behind him and giving him a shoulder massage. Combeferre and Enjolras remain on the couch, but they’re both watching.

“That’s your poetry notebook, isn’t it?” Courfeyrac asks. His voice is normally loud and exuberant, but now he’s talking softly. He’s not pitying or anything, just soft.

“It was,” Jehan says.

“R will fix it,” Courfeyrac says. His easy manner is reassuring. “You’ll see. What happened to it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“C’mon, you don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

“It was just Gueulemer.”

Grantaire clenches his fists. Of course it was Gueulemer because Gueulemer is a complete ass. He hopes Mont flayed him alive for doing this to Jehan.

“Gueulemer’s one of your boyfriend’s friends, isn’t he?” Courfeyrac asks, still easily asking questions and easily pulling out the answers as though he’d been born doing it. “He’s the one who looks like he belongs in prison, yeah?”

“That’s the one.”

“What’d your little poetry book do to upset him so much?” Courfeyrac asks.

“I didn’t do anything,” Jehan says. He starts massaging his right hand with his left. Grantaire recognizes it as an old self-soothing technique. “I just asked if they wouldn’t mind keeping their voices down. I was trying to work on some poems for class.”

Jehan swears and lurches forward, like he’s suddenly got somewhere else to be, something else to do, but Courfeyrac still has his hands on Jehan’s shoulders and gently pulls him back.

“I still have the assignment to do,” he says. The words snowball from his lips. “I still have to get it done. I have to get it done by midnight. Fuck, this is going to ruin my grade. Fuck. Shit. This—”

“It can wait,” Courfeyrac says.

“But—”

“It can wait,” he says again. “You need your poetry book in one piece to be able to work on this, right? You can wait till Grantaire fixes your book before you start worrying about that, okay? Look, he’s back already. Your book will be fixed in no time.”

Grantaire is so shocked by how easily Courfeyrac is navigating through Jehan’s panic that he doesn’t move for a moment, even though Courfeyrac’s words were a clear invitation to sit his ass down and get to work. He has spent years figuring out the best ways to handle Jehan’s anxiety attacks, and most of that was him fucking up by giving Jehan weed, because that was his own preferred method of handling problems. But Courfeyrac and his soft voice and his soothing words and his shoulder massage seem to be exactly what Jehan needs right now.

He finally seems to gain control over his body again and he takes a seat at the table. He sets to work on repairing the notebook while Courfeyrac continues unravelling Jehan’s story. “So you asked them to keep their voices down, and Gueulemer did this? Seems a little like overkill.”

“He was high,” Jehan said. “They were all high. And Gueulemer uses PCP sometimes, which, you know, it makes people more aggressive sometimes.”

Grantaire looks up from the pages he is taping back together. Gueulemer is an aggressive brute on the best of days, but under the influence of PCP...Grantaire doesn’t even want to think of what he could do. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” he asks.

He can’t see any blood or bruises on Jehan, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

“He shoved me against the table,” he says. “It’s no big thing.”

But he’s still massaging his own hands which makes Grantaire think it’s a much bigger thing than he’s letting on.

“Where was your boyfriend in all of this?” Courfeyrac asks. “I thought you said he normally keeps Gueulemer in check around you.”

Eponine comes back with the tea and she sets it on the table beside Jehan before she takes a seat on the couch between Enjolras and Combeferre. Both men are trying to pretend that they’re not listening, but they’re doing a remarkably poor job of it. Luckily for them, Jehan doesn’t seem to notice.

“Mont was high too,” Jehan says quietly, as though that excuses Mont’s behavior—which, as far as Grantaire is concerned, it damn well doesn’t. “That’s why he didn’t do anything. He’s not thinking straight. He’s going to feel lousy about it in the morning, I know he will. And it’s my own fault anyway. I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew they were drinking and smoking and whatever. I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to reason with them or anything.”

“You have every right to ask people to be quiet in your own home,” Courfeyrac says.

“But it’s not my home. Not really. I mean, Mont pays the rent, he just sort of lets me crash there. I shouldn’t have gotten in the way.”

“Yeah, never mind that if you weren’t around to chip in with rent, he’d be out on his ass out a month ago,” Grantaire mutters.

“You weren’t getting in the way,” Courfeyrac says. “Even if you do feel like a guest there, Gueulemer is even more of a guest than you are. He shouldn’t have upset you.”

“Can we...Can we not talk about what I should or shouldn’t have done? I’m doing that enough on my own.”

“I thought we were talking about what Gueulemer shouldn’t have done, but okay,” Courfeyrac says. He moves his hands from Jehan’s shoulders to his hair. He gently undoes Jehan’s braid and starts carding his fingers through Jehan’s hair. “Whatever happened back at your place is over, and no one here is going to think less of you for any of it. And for the record, if you ever need a quiet place to study, you’re always welcome to go over to Enjolras and Combeferre’s. Their apartment is practically a studying haven.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.”

“It’s not an inconvenience to help out a friend,” Courfeyrac says.

Silence blossoms between them and on the other end of the room, Combeferre and Enjolras make a valiant effort at light-hearted conversation—which apparently is the one thing that Enjolras is bad at because while Combeferre sounds like he might actually be interested in the most recent episode of some TV show, Enjolras sounds like he’d rather have a root canal. Their whole exchange makes Grantaire smile a little, because it’s amusing to see Enjolras so out of his element.

He continues taping pages together—he’s trying his best to keep everything in the right order and he hopes Jehan doesn’t mind if he screws up one or two of the poems—and he keeps an eye on Jehan as he works. The tea has helped calm him down, just like Grantaire knew it would, and Courfeyrac is still playing with his hair. And for a moment, it seems like the worst of it has passed.

But the longer the silence lasts, the more agitated Jehan’s movements get. After a few minutes, he starts up on the hand massaging again, which he had stopped in lieu of drinking tea. When he hears Jehan’s breath hitch, Grantaire sets aside the notebook and turns to his friend.

“What exactly did Gueulemer say?” he asks. “Normally you don’t let him get to you like this.”

“Sorry,” Jehan says. “I know it’s stupid. I shouldn’t be this upset. I—”

“No, you misunderstood me,” he says. “You have every right to be upset, that doesn’t bother me. But I’m worried that something more has happened that you’re not telling us because normally you’re not this bothered by him running his mouth.”

Courfeyrac shoots him a look of gratitude, like he’d been wanting to ask that same question for a while now but was unsure how to.

“It’s nothing,” Jehan says. “I’m just overreacting like usual. Shit.”

“Jehan,” Courfeyrac says.

“Fuck. Shit. It’s not a big deal. It’s fine. He probably didn’t mean it.”

Grantaire and Courfeyrac exchange a glance before Grantaire asks, “Didn’t mean what?”

“Mont would never let him anyway. He’d kill him before—fuck. Shit.”

Courfeyrac moves around so he’s crouched in front of Jehan. He takes both of his hands in his own. “Jehan, did Gueulemer threaten you?”

“He probably didn’t mean it,” Jehan says, looking away.

Courfeyrac squeezes his hands. “What did he say?”

“He just—fuck—he just said that he’d like to rape me.”

The silence in the room is deafening.

Enjolras is the first one to find his voice again. “I’m sorry,” he says as though he’s hoping he misheard. “Did you just say that another man threatened to rape you?”

“He didn’t threaten,” Jehan says. “He just said that he’d like to. He didn’t say he would or anything. Mont would never let him do that.”

“Where was Montparnasse during all of this anyway?” Eponine asks.

“He was there.”

“And did he kick Gueulemer’s teeth in for saying that?”

Jehan shakes his head.

“Well, why the fuck not?” Grantaire snaps because he doesn’t care if Montparnasse was high as kite when Gueulemer said that. Jehan didn’t deserve to be talked to like that and Parnasse damn well knows that.

But Jehan seems to wilt a little in the face of Grantaire’s anger. “He probably didn’t mean anything by it,” he says. “And I don’t think he’d actually do it, not really. Mont would never actually let him get close to me, I know he wouldn’t. And even then, I can take care of myself. I don’t—you don’t—it’s nothing to worry about, honestly. I didn’t mean to upset you guys. I shouldn’t have—”

Courfeyrac squeezes Jehan’s hands again, getting his attention. “ _You_ didn’t upset us, okay? We’re upset because someone hurt you, not because of anything you did.”

“He didn’t hurt me, not really.” Grantaire’s no sure if Jehan is trying to convince them or himself. “They’re just words. He doesn’t mean anything by them. He’s all talk, you know? He doesn’t ever do half the things he says he will. I shouldn’t have gotten worked up about it. I’m just embarrassing myself.”

Courfeyrac’s lips twitch, like he’s trying to smile but can’t quite do it. “If you think panicking in front of your friends after some psychopath threatened to rape you—”

“He didn’t threaten,” Jehan says.

“Either way, if you think this is embarrassing, I have obviously not told you enough of my own embarrassing stories. Trust me, you don’t know embarrassment until you piss yourself when you’re fifteen and in front of all your classmates because you can’t stop laughing.”

Jehan gives him an accusatory look. “You’re making that up.”

“Am not,” Courfeyrac says. He holds up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

Jehan shakes his head. “You would be a boy scout.”

This time, Courfeyrac manages an actual smile. “Look, I think we’ve officially killed our chances of doing anything productive tonight, so why don’t we go snuggle up on the couch with Combeferre and Eponine and Enjolras—he loves snuggling, don’t give me that look—and watch a Disney movie.”

“I’ve still got those poems to finish.”

“And they're not going to get done until Grantaire finishes mending your notebook,” he says. “And look, he’s got quite a load of work ahead of him.”

Grantaire forces himself to smile at Jehan, even though he still wants to knock Montparnasse’s teeth in for being a shitty boyfriend. Maybe he’ll call up Bahorel. He’d enjoy the opportunity to knock someone around. “I’ll have this done by the time the movie’s over,” he promises.

Jehan still doesn’t look convinced, but Courfeyrac tugs him to his feet anyway and pulls him toward the couch. The others have already made room for him—and Grantaire doesn’t miss the way that Combeferre uses it as an excuse to sit closer to Eponine—and Jehan wraps himself in a blanket while Courfeyrac flips through Eponine’s movie collection, trying to find something suitable.

Grantaire takes his time as he fixes the notebook, treating every torn page with the care it deserves. He’s in no rush to pull Jehan away from the comfort of friends and Disney’s _Tangled_ (even if he is, perhaps, a little jealous that Jehan is wedged so close to Enjolras that they’re touching from shoulder to hip). Besides, working with his hands helps him fight the urge to get up and get a drink because he has no idea how to help—other than to keep working on the notebook—and drinking is just sort of what he does in situations like this.

Half-way through the movie, Eponine and Combeferre get up to make themselves more comfortable on the floor, and as Jehan pulls his feet onto the couch to curl up against Courfeyrac, Enjolras gets up to get a glass of water from the kitchen. On his way back to the living room, he stops by the table Grantaire’s working at.

Grantaire rubs the back of his neck, because (1) he’s uncomfortably aware of how close Enjolras is standing to him right now and (2) he’s equally uncomfortably aware that Enjolras is studying the artwork on the back cover of the notebook.

“Did you paint this?” he asks, after a moment.

“It was a gift for Jehan last Christmas,” he says. “Buying a plain notebook and painting it was cheaper than buying one with a fancy cover.”

“I knew you painted,” Enjolras said, “but I didn’t realize it was this good.”

“Didn’t think I could stay sober long enough to do this, did you?”

Enjolras is silent for a moment, and Grantaire smirks because he can practically hear Enjolras counting to ten in his mind. He really shouldn’t get this kind of amusement in pushing Enjolras’s buttons, but he does. “That’s not what I said,” he says, his voice deliberately calm.

“But you were still thinking it.”

“I was not. Damn it, Grantaire, I was trying to pay you a compliment.”

“A compliment?” Grantaire says, turning a little so he can look up at Enjolras’s perfect face. “For me? To call my very own? I’m so flattered.”

Irritation flashes across Enjolras’s face. “Why do I even bother?” he mutters.

He turns to head back to the living room and Grantaire can breathe just a bit easier.

“Hey, Apollo,” he calls after Enjolras.

Enjolras pauses and turns.

“Thanks,” he says and Enjolras rewards him with a smile.

He watches Enjolras return to the couch and take care not to jostle Jehan, whose eyes are drooping with his head resting against Courfeyrac’s shoulder, and he smiles a little to himself as he sets back to work.

By the end of the movie, Grantaire has the notebook pieced back together as promised. It doesn’t look nice, of course, but it’s in one piece. Clear tape holds together the front cover and most of Jehan’s already-written poems, but the still-blank pages in the back half of the book weren’t torn at all, which means Jehan won’t have any problem writing on them. He’s stitched the book back together and while it will probably always be a little fragile, he knows Jehan will take good care of it.

But the efforts of his labor go unappreciated, because somewhere between Flynn Ryder freaking out about Rapunzel’s magic hair and the end of the movie, Jehan fell asleep. He’s slumped over on the couch and his head rests on Courfeyrac’s lap—which Grantaire should have expected because Jehan’s anxiety attacks usually wipe him right out and leave him exhausted for days.

Courfeyrac, of course, doesn’t seem to mind at all and he’s combing his fingers through Jehan’s hair as the credits roll.

Grantaire gets up, flips on the lights, and sits down on the coffee table in the living room, setting Jehan’s notebook down beside him.

“Don’t wake him up,” he says to Courfeyrac. “He needs the sleep.”

“Waking him up wasn’t even on my list of things to do right now,” Courfeyrac says. “You don’t mind if he stays here tonight, do you? I don’t think he should go back to his place.”

“I was going to insist on it,” Eponine says.

For a moment, an uncomfortable silence reigns between all of them.

Courfeyrac is the one to break its hold on them. “So, is someone else going to mention the elephant rape threat in the room, or am I going to have to do it?”

There’s a beat of silence, then immediately Enjolras and Combeferre launch into conversation, as though they’d both been waiting for permission to talk about this freely,

“Obviously we can’t let him go back there,” Combeferre says. “I don’t care if he thinks his boyfriend will protect him, it’s not safe.”

“He can always stay at our place,” Enjolras says. “And I know he’s welcome here, but does Gueulemer know where you live? This might not be the safest place for him. What about your place, Courf?”

“I’ve just got the one bedroom,” he says, “but I can sleep on the couch if he ever wants to crash at my place.”

Enjolras nods. “Is Feuilly still staying at Bahorel’s?”

“He got his mess sorted out with his landlord a few weeks ago,” Combeferre says.

“Bahorel’s might be a good option, then. It’d be like having a bodyguard on hand.”

“That’s supposing that Jehan _wants_ a bodyguard,” Grantaire says. Their concern is comforting, of course, but Grantaire knows Jehan well enough to know he'd be annoyed by the assumption that he needs to be taken care of. “And it’s supposing that Jehan lets us do anything to begin with. He’s an adult. He’s not going to want to be told what to do.”

“We’re not telling him what to do,” Enjolras says. “We’re offering him safe spaces because obviously his home _isn’t_ one.”

Eponine shakes her head. “R is right on this one,” she says. “Jehan doesn’t like people perceiving him as weak. If you all start opening your homes to him, he’s going to think that we think he can’t take care of himself.”

“But this has nothing to do with whether or not he can take care of himself,” Combeferre says. “It’s not his responsibility to walk on eggshells so some psychopath doesn’t try to assault him.”

“He’ll see this as running away,” Eponine says. “He won’t do it.”

“I’m not going to sit by and watch him put himself in a dangerous situation because he doesn’t want to appear weak,” Enjolras says. “I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if something like that happened to him and I could have prevented it.”

“If Gueulemer really wants to hurt him,” Courfeyrac says quietly, “we’re not going to be able to stop him. I’ve seen him before. He makes Bahorel look like a fluffy little kitten.”

Combeferre sighs and readjusts his glasses on his nose. “R, Eponine, you two know Gueulemer, right? Do you think there’s a chance that he’ll go through with this?”

Eponine shrugs. “He’s capable of it,” she says. “If I found out he’s already raped someone, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. But with Jehan…”

“Montparnasse has always been fond of Jehan,” Grantaire says. “Even before they started dating. He was, I don’t know, fascinated by him. And because of that, he’s always been protective—possessive, almost—of him. If Gueulemer tried anything, Montparnasse would skin him alive.”

“That’s supposing he’s not high,” Enjolras says. “He didn’t come to Jehan’s defense tonight. We have no guarantee that this won’t happen again.”

“Can we ever guarantee anything?” Grantaire asks. “Look, I’m all for making sure Jehan doesn’t get fucked over by Gueulemer as much as the next person, but if Gueulemer really wants to hurt Jehan, he’ll find a way. And as much as I want to knock Parnasse’s teeth in for letting Gueulemer carry on like that in the first place, the fact remains that Jehan’s best defense against Gueulemer is Montparnasse.”

He hates making that admission. He's well aware of the fact that Jehan and Montparnasse have been in some weird relationship funk these last two weeks, but he also has three years of experience watching Jehan and Montparnasse and Gueulemer all interact to know that Montparnasse is their best bet right now.

“He’s right,” Eponine says. “Parnasse can be a bit rough around the edges, but sexual assault is one of the few moral lines he still draws. As much as I hate to say it, Jehan is safe with him around.”

“When he’s sober,” Enjolras says again. “Although even when he’s sober, I still don’t like him.”

Courfeyrac drags his hand through his hair, making his curls stick up at odd angles. “This is going to have to be Jehan’s decision,” he says. “I don’t think we can force him into this one way or the other. Jehan’s smart. If he thinks he’s in danger, he’ll leave. He did that tonight. We know that’s something he’ll do.”

“What if he won’t?” Combeferre asks. “What if he can’t?”

Courfeyrac sighs. “If the worst happens, we’ll be here for him.”

Grantaire refuses to contemplate that possibility.

Later, they wake Jehan just enough to help him stumble back to the spare room and Grantaire helps him shimmy out of his jeans before tucking him into bed. Jehan’s asleep again before he turns the light off and when he shuts the door, he finds Courfeyrac loitering in the hallway outside the room. He’s worrying his bottom lip between his teeth and his gaze lingers on the bedroom door.

“Thanks for helping me with him,” Grantaire says.

Courfeyrac nods and then sighs. “Are we doing the right thing?” he says abruptly.

“What?”

“You’ve known him the longest. Are we doing the right thing? Letting him still live with Montparnasse, I mean. I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to him.”

His voice is a cocktail of longing and fear and determination and a half-dozen other things that Grantaire can’t even begin to name.

“Montparnasse won’t let Gueulemer touch him,” he says, hoping his words will be comforting. He always feel out of place when he’s supposed to be comforting people. He never feels like he knows what to say.

“Things between him and Montparnasse have been strained,” Courfeyrac says. He tugs his hand through his hair again. At this point his normally well-kept hair is beginning to resemble a bird's nest. “I don’t know how much he’s told you, but there are signs. Shit, R, I’m worried about him.”

Grantaire nods because he worries too. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” he says. “Whatever happens, he’s not going to go through this alone.”

Courfeyrac pulls him into a hug, which makes Grantaire tense at first, but he relaxes enough to return the hug and pat Courfeyrac awkwardly on the back.

“Thank you,” Courfeyrac says, pulling back with a sheepish smile. “You’re a good friend for him—for him and for Enjolras and for all of us. I’m glad you stuck around.”

Grantaire nods, unsure of what to say. Luckily, he’s spared the task of coming up with something when Combeferre and Enjolras announce that they’re leaving and beckon Courfeyrac to come with them. As he watches the three of them leave together, all he can do is hope that he won’t let them all down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that ten out of ten randomly polled people agree that you guys are amazing? It's true. Thank you all so much for your comments and kudos and support. I know I say this with every chapter, but you guys are amazing and it helps me deal with everyday world suck so much to know that you all appreciate/like what I'm doing here. If I were the sort off person who liked hugs, I would totally hug all of you.
> 
> The next chapter will be on Friday :)


	32. Chapter Thirty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eponine has a little chat with Montparnasse...and then has a much more pleasant chat with Combeferre

Eponine checks in on Jehan as she gets ready for work. He’s still asleep in the guest bedroom, as he has been for the last ten hours. She doesn’t have the heart to wake him, not after what a rough night he’d had last night, and even if she did want to wake him, Grantaire had told her expressly not to before he left for a morning art class a few hours ago.

“He needs the sleep,” he said. “He does so much better when he’s gotten enough sleep and I don’t want to risk him panicking again because someone thinks it might be a good idea to wake him up.”

Grantaire had also taken the liberty of hacking into Jehan’s email account and emailing his professors to let them know that Jehan was sick and would not be in class.

Eponine suspects that Jehan will be less than pleased with these developments—he’d sounded frantic last night at the thought of not being able to get this poetry assignment in on time—but she also suspects that in the long run, he’ll be better off for it.

She checks her phone as she gets ready, because Grantaire swore he’d be back before she left and she really isn’t comfortable leaving Jehan here by himself because she doesn’t want him to wake up and panic because of his missed classes and/or late assignments without someone here to help talk him down. But there aren’t any messages or missed calls on her phone, so she just has to assume that Grantaire will be here on time.

When someone knocks on the front door, she thinks that maybe Grantaire is running late but merely summoned one of the others to come in his place. Part of her hopes it’s Combeferre, because her days are always better when she sees him, and another part of her hopes that it’s not, because she’d probably get distracted and she can’t afford to be late for work.

She opens the door, sees Montparnasse, and immediately swings it shut again. He gets his foot in the way before it can close properly.

“Go away,” she says, stomping on his foot, trying to get him to move it out of the way so she can lock him out. “I’m not too happy with you right now, so it’s in your best interest to get out.”

Montparnasse presses against the door until she relents and lets him open it. She refuses to move to let him into the apartment, however, and stands in front of him with her arms crossed.

“What do you want?”

“No need to get your panties in a twist, Ponine,” Montparnasse says. “I’m looking for Jehan. He didn’t come home last night and he’s not answering his phone.”

“Maybe he didn’t come home last night because your shitty excuse for a friend threatened to rape him.”

Montparnasse rolls his eyes at her. “Gueulemer was high and running his mouth. He thinks things like that are funny.”

“Rape threats aren’t a joke, Parnasse.”

“They are to Gueulemer,” he says.

“And that makes it okay?”

“You’re overreacting,” he says. “If I honestly thought Gueulemer was any sort of danger to Jehan, do you really think I’d let him anywhere near him?”

“You seemed pretty content to let him do whatever he wanted last night.”

“And did Jehan tell you that I stepped in when Gueulemer took it too far? Fuck, Ponine, do you really think I’d let anyone hurt him? Do you really think I’d let anyone else fuck around with what’s mine?”

“First of all,” she says, “check the creepy, possessive language, because it’s unsexy as hell. Second, you forget how well I know you. You’re a lot more dangerous and a lot more cruel than people give you credit for, and I swear if you hurt Jehan or allow him to be hurt by one of your little playmates, I will have your balls in a jar. Are we clear on that?”

“You always were one for melodramatics,” he says. “Look, if I promise to chew Gueulemer’s ass about this, will you let me in? I’m worried about him.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that last night.”

Montparnasse’s expression hardens. “Maybe you should stop acting like a petty little bitch and let me in to see my boyfriend.”

“No,” she says. He crossed the line when he called her a bitch. She doesn’t tolerate crap like that from him. “Get out of my apartment before I call the cops on you. You’ll hear from Jehan when he’s ready to talk to you.”

“Mont? Is that you?”

Shit. She turns around to see that Jehan has woken up and stumbled out from the back hall. He’s only wearing mistmatched socks, underwear, and the oversized sweater he’d been wearing last night. His hair is mussed and one side of his face is red from being pressed up against the pillow all night. The combination makes him look entirely pathetic and makes her want to wrap him in a large blanket and send him back to bed.

Montparnasse smirks at her and sidesteps around her to enter the apartment. He goes straight to Jehan and he’s all tenderness and soft touches and it makes her want to shout because she knows that he is anything but tenderness and soft touches.

“I was worried when you didn’t come home last night, bird,” he says.

Jehan sags against him, clearly not entirely awake. “I think I fell asleep here,” he says around a yawn. “I’m so tired.”

“Where are your pants? I’ll take you home and you can go right back to sleep.”

Jehan shakes his head and sort of nestles in against Montparnasse’s chest. “There are beds here. I don’t want to leave.”

“We need Eponine’s permission to stay here,” he says. “I don’t know if she wants that.”

He turns to look at her and the damn bastard is smirking at her.

“Please, Ponine?” Jehan says. “I’m just so tired.”

“Of course you can stay, Jehan,” she says. When she addresses Montparnasse, her voice is noticeably less kind. “But I swear, Parnasse, if you do anything—”

“My balls in a jar, yes, I know,” Montparnasse says.

She hates how smug he sounds.

He wraps his arm around Jehan’s shoulder and steers him back toward the bedrooms. “C’mon, bird, let’s get you back into bed.”

“You’ll stay?” Jehan says.

“Of course I will.”

Eponine is still fuming when she leaves the apartment for work five minutes later. She runs into Grantaire in the stairwell.

“Jehan still asleep?” he says. “Sorry I’m a little late, I got caught—are you okay?”

“Montparnasse came by,” she says.

“Did he apologize for last night?”

“He doesn’t think he needs to,” she says. “According to him, Gueulemer was just making a rape joke. Rape jokes are apparently funny now.”

Grantaire winces a little. “Did he take Jehan home or did you not even let him in?”

“That was my plan,” she says, “but then Jehan woke up and now they’re cuddling together in the spare room.”

“I’ll talk to Parnasse, okay?” Grantaire says. “How was Jehan when he woke up? Better at all?”

“He was exhausted.”

Grantaire nods. “I don’t think he’s been sleeping well. I know he’s worried about Thanksgiving with his family. I should—”

“You should take care of yourself,” Eponine says. “Before you start worrying about taking care of him.” She’s been watching him slowly cut back on the drinks and she knows him well enough to know that soon he’s going to hit the point where the drinks he allows himself to have won’t be enough to keep the urges in check. She knows equally well that if any one thing could be considered a drinking trigger, it’s worrying about people he cares about.

“I’m still safely on the road to sobriety,” he says. “It’s not even hard yet.”

She doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t have the time to get into it right now. “I’ve gotta run or I’m going to be late for my shift,” she says. “But text me if Montparnasse does anything remotely ass-ish. I told him I get his balls in a jar if he does.”

Grantaire smirks at her. “You always were good with threats,” he says. “Now go. I’ll keep an eye on Parnasse. He’s not worth losing your job over.”

She kisses him on the cheek and hurries down the stairs.

* * *

 

Eponine is grateful that it’s an easy day at work. No shitty customers, no drama in the kitchen, several generous tips. (That was the best part about working as a waitress during the holiday season. People were always far more generous with their tips.) When her shift ends, she finds Combeferre waiting for her outside the restaurant with two coffees in hand.

He’s bundled up against the cold, with a sedate wool coat and a blue scarf wound around his neck, which makes his eyes look especially nice. He grins at her as she comes out and hands her the coffee.

“I thought you might like a little pick-me-up after work,” he says.

She’s never had this before. A boy who is kind and thoughtful and brings her little treats just because he thinks she might like it. She kisses him before taking a sip of her coffee.

“You’re wonderful,” she says. She tucks her hand in his as they walk.

“I texted Grantaire earlier,” he says. “I wanted to make sure that Jehan was doing okay, and he told me that Montparnasse had come by and that you had talked with him. I guess I just wanted to see for myself that you’re okay, too.”

“I’m fine,” she says. “Really. Montparnasse just pisses me off.”

“Do you mind if I ask how you all even know him?”

This is another things she likes about Combeferre. He doesn’t pry. If she tells him she doesn’t want him to know how she knows Montparnasse, he’ll respect that. He won’t pry, he won’t go investigating. He trusts her...and that means a lot to her. “We all grew up in the same neighborhood,” she says. “Well, Parnasse, Grantaire, and I did. Jehan lived across town. I’ve known Parnasse since I was little. His dad used to do business with mine.”

They both know that anyone doing business with her dad isn’t doing anything that’s legal.

“I even dated him once,” she adds.

“Seriously?” Combeferre says. “He doesn’t really seem your type.”

“I was fourteen and stupid,” she says. “And we only dated for about a month before I realized I was being fourteen and stupid.”

“I’m glad you wisened up,” he says. “And for the record, I think your taste in men has very much improved.”

“Someone’s getting cocky,” she says, smiling a little.

“It’s a natural consequence when you spend as much time around Courfeyrac as I do.”

She laughs. “I’m sure he’d be proud to know that he has such influence over you.”

“Let’s not tell him. It’ll go straight to his head.”

Being with Combeferre makes her feel light and he makes it easier for her to stomach the idea that Montparnasse might still be in her apartment with Jehan. He makes the stress in her life infinitely easier to handle. “Thanks for coming by,” she says. “You have no idea how much this helps.”

“My coffee delivery service is a little self-motivated,” he says. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I was wondering if you’d like to have Thanksgiving with me and my family,” he says. “I figured you wouldn’t be going to your own home for the holiday, and we’ve got all my aunts and uncles and cousins coming this year, so there’ll be plenty of food—if not much room—and I would really love it if you’d come.”

“Oh,” she says. When the boy you’re kind of unofficially dating says there’s something to talk about, your mind doesn’t immediately jump to invitations to spend the holiday together.

“You don’t have to answer right away,” he says. “We’re still a week out, and my mom’s already buying enough food to feed an army, so me having a plus one isn’t going to change that at all.”

She chews on her lip for a moment before looking at him and asking. “What about a plus four?”

“Who do you have in mind?”

“My brother and sister,” she says. “They deserve a nice Thanksgiving, and they deserve some time away from my parents.”

“I’m sure we can make room for them,” he says. “Gavroche is twelve and your sister is what, fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” she says.

“Who’s the other person you have in mind?”

“Grantaire,” she says. “We normally do holidays together. You know, a sort of Friends-giving sort of thing. Normally, I’d be okay bailing on him just once, but Jehan’s also not going to be around because he’s got that stupid thing with his parents, and I’d rather not leave him all alone.”

Combeferre smiles. “Let him know he’s invited,” he says. “Your siblings too. Seriously, with as much food as my mom’s preparing, having a couple extra mouths to feed isn’t going to matter much. Of course, I will have to explain to my mom why my girlfriend is bringing another guy to Thanksgiving dinner, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

She trips over her own feet and looks up at him when he steadies her. “Am I?”

“Are you what?”

“Your girlfriend. You called me your girlfriend. We haven’t actually talked about we are or what we’re doing.”

“Oh,” Combeferre says slowly. “Well, I adore you. I adore spending time with you. I adore kissing you. I would love for this to be an exclusive thing, but if you’re not comfortable with that, then we can take things slow. I don’t want you to feel like I’m rushing you into anything.”

“It’s not rushing,” she says. “This feels...this is perfect to me. If you want this to be exclusive, let’s make this exclusive.”

She loves the smile that Combeferre offers her and they seal their discussion with a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, everyone. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend because you certainly all deserve it! Seriously, you guys rock :)
> 
> Next chapter will be on Tuesday


	33. Chapter Thirty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire touches base with Jehan and Montparnasse

Grantaire’s first instinct when he gets home is to get a beer—or better yet, maybe something stronger—out of the fridge, even though it’s not even noon. But it’s no good to start drinking so early, especially with Eponine’s warning fresh on his mind (despite her concerns, he really is doing okay—he’s cut out high proof (and unfortunately high quality) drinks completely and he’s been weaning himself off low proof drinks slowly and while the instinct to drink more is there, the overwhelming urge to is not), so instead he drops his school bag by the door and checks the spare room. He doesn’t knock, nor does he open the door. If Montparnasse is over, there are any number of things that could be happening behind that door that he has no desire to see, but instead he presses his ear against the door.

He hears nothing, so he assumes that Jehan has already fallen back asleep. Depending on how well Jehan’s been sleeping these last few days, there’s a chance that he’ll be asleep for hours yet, and Grantaire figures he might as well get some work done. He’s got several big projects due in the next few weeks for his art classes, including a series of character expression sheets for his illustration class that he's supposed to have been working on all semester long. The assignment is to base character designs off people they’ve known the longest and most people in the class have based their character designs off family members. Grantaire thinks there’s not enough money nor enough booze in the world to convince him to base a character design off his old man or even his mom, so he’s had to make due with designing characters around his oldest friends. Jehan’s was the easiest, considering Jehan’s unusually expressive in any circumstance, and he knows Eponine well enough that he didn’t struggle much with hers. He did both of her younger siblings and both her parents because he needs ten sheets for his portfolio for the class and he’s supposed to have an age range, but that still leaves him with four more sheets to do. He’ll probably end up doing an Enjolras-based sheet (because when doesn’t Enjolras work his way into Grantaire’s art), but it doesn’t seem right to do the other sheets off people he’s only known for a couple of months.

Which leaves his options to people he knew during his childhood.

And really, all that leaves him with is Montparnasse.

He’s not sure how he feels about that, but he pulls out his sketchbook (his nice one that he uses for classes and not his shitty one that’s filled with half-assed sketches and doodles, most of which were done when he was drunk or high) and takes a seat at the kitchen table and sets to work.

He’s known Montparnasse for more than seven years now—longer than he’s known anyone, really, except for Eponine, who introduced him to Montparnasse in the first place. He was thirteen at the time, and growing more desperate by the day to find something to numb his mind. He’d tried sneaking a couple of his dad’s beers and got broken fingers for his efforts. Broken fingers were always the worst. He couldn’t draw with broken fingers.

Two years older, Montparnasse was already well on his way to becoming a neighborhood legend. They all lived in the poor part of town and they were an insular sort of group and had their own way to gauge coolness and respectability. At the age of fifteen, Montparnasse had an arrest record, a history of talking his way out of trouble with various authority figures, and lucrative connections to drug dealers. His father had abandoned him and his mom years before and Montparnasse was making enough money from petty crimes to support his mom after she lost her job because she refused to have sex with her boss.

Eponine had introduced the two of them, though Grantaire had been hearing about him months before. Back in those days, Eponine thought Montparnasse was hot. Now that he’s older, Grantaire wonders how much of that was actual physical attraction and how much of it was Montparnasse being one of the few older boys around who didn’t treat the younger girls like shit or pieces of meat. It wasn’t something he ever planned on asking Eponine about. Her relationship with Montparnasse now was frosty at best.

When he met Parnasse for the first time, Grantaire had been hiding out at Eponine’s parents’ motel. His dad was on some violent rape porn binge and had developed the tendency of forcing Grantaire to watch it with him, so Grantaire made a habit of not coming home until he absolutely had to each night. His mom worried, but at the time, he felt that her worry was a small price to pay to avoid dealing with his dad’s “violent porn will make you a real man” shit.

Parnasse was at the motel that day, as Eponine so thoughtfully pointed out, to supply her dad with drugs. (When Thenardier got mad at her for announcing that so publicly, he threw a ceramic mug at her head, which she dodged easily. Thenardier always did have terrible aim. Eponine then put her hands on her hips, looking frighteningly like her mother, and said, “It’s not like the entire fucking neighborhood doesn’t already know that Parnasse is our resident drug dealer,” before grabbing Grantaire by the wrist and pulling him outside where she spent the next two hours trying to master some new skateboard trick that she’d seen some other boys do outside school.)

It was a week after that that Grantaire sought out Montparnasse on his own with a fist full of cash—money he’d been carefully stealing from his dad’s wallet over the past year. (His dad would notice large chunks of money disappearing at once, but he never noticed when Grantaire slipped out a few singles or a couple of quarters at time.) Grantaire was thirteen the first time he smoked pot…and he had Montparnasse to thank for that.

Parnasse became his go-to man for drugs, mostly because Parnasse didn’t treat him like a little kid or try to rip him off. He said it was loyalty because they were from the same shit-hole part of town. Grantaire later found out that it had more to do with Montparnasse taking pity on the little gay kid when he was just starting to explore his own sexuality. Their business relationship was straight forward—supply and demand, nothing more—but their friendship was more complicated.

Complicated didn’t even begin to describe it, really. When Grantaire was fourteen and found his mom dead in the bathroom after a drug overdose, it didn’t take a genius to figure out where she got the drugs. Everyone in their neighborhood went to Montparnasse. It was a loyalty thing. Montparnasse told him once, when they were both drunk and stoned, that he wouldn’t have sold her anything if he knew she was going to OD on it. He thought she was just trying to get a few hours of escape from Grantaire’s dad—everyone knew about Grantaire’s dad, like it was the world’s worst-kept secret. It was the closest thing to an apology Grantaire was ever going to get from Montparnasse on that matter.

But after his mom died, his friendship with Montparnasse changed—mostly because whatever guilt Montparnasse felt about his hand in Grantaire’s mother’s death manifested itself in being kind to Grantaire. Of course, being kind was subjective. He was kind in his own Montparnasse sort of way, which usually meant that Grantaire could get his drugs cheap from Montparnasse or that when Montparnasse hooked him up with a fake ID when he was sixteen that it was higher quality than what other people got. Grantaire could usually get away with calling Montparnasse out on his shit without having Montparnasse’s temper blow up in his face.

It was a weird sort of relationship, but one that made sense to both of them.

When Grantaire was sixteen-going-on-seventeen, he met Jehan at school. (Grantaire had skipped class to hide out in the bathroom and drink, Jehan had bolted out of class and into the same bathroom to puke up his breakfast because he was worried about an oral presentation he had later in the day.) He and Jehan hit it off, mostly because Jehan was persistent and didn’t ever seem bothered by Grantaire’s teenage surliness. It was a year after that that Grantaire introduced Jehan and Montparnasse to each other. Jehan’s dad had caught him making out with a boy in his room—they were supposed to be working on a physics project together—and Jehan was panicking worse than Grantaire had ever seen before and the only thing Grantaire could think to do to make it better was get Jehan high.

Which led them to Montparnasse’s apartment, which led to Jehan questioning Gueulemer’s much vaunted heterosexuality when he made one too many homophobic slurs, which led to Montparnasse taking an instant liking to Jehan, because watching someone as small as Jehan was stare down Gueulemer with complete calm and confidence was impressive no matter the circumstances.

For two years, Grantaire watched the two of them dance around each other. Montparnasse always had reasons for not pursuing anything with Jehan, even though Grantaire knew he was interested. His reasons changed every time Grantaire asked, but Grantaire was pretty sure it had to do with the fact that Montparnasse was nearly twenty when he met Jehan and that was old enough for his interest in a high schooler to seem creepy. (Eponine always said that that was giving Montparnasse far too much credit and that it probably had more to do with the fact that if Jehan’s father had caught the two of them together when Jehan still lived at home, Jehan would be dead and Montparnasse would be in prison. “Parnasse doesn’t do prison,” she said at the time. “He says he’s too pretty for it.”)  In those two years, Jehan and Montparnasse grew closer—perhaps out of necessity. Grantaire had graduated high school and moved into the city at that point and he didn’t have a car and Jehan didn’t—still doesn’t—know how to drive.  Parnasse ended up driving Jehan into the city a lot to see Grantaire—and considering each leg of that trip was a half hour, it gave them plenty of time alone together. It got to the point that being alone in the same room with them was practically unbearable because there was always this weird sexual tension between them.

But then Jehan graduated high school and moved into the city himself, and within two weeks, he and Montparnasse started dating. Over the course of their friendship and now their romantic relationship, Montparnasse had been there for Jehan through a lot of shit—and was usually more compassionate than Grantaire knew Montparnasse was capable of being—but that really doesn’t excuse his shitty behavior these last few weeks—and especially last night—and Grantaire intends to make sure that Montparnasse is fully aware of that.

After an hour of sketching, he’s just settled on a character design for the Montparnasse-based expression sheet and he hears the bedroom door open from the back hall. A moment later, the bathroom door closes and Grantaire can hear the water running. Montparnasse emerges from the hall a moment later.

“Jehan wanted to take a shower,” he says.

“And you’re not going to join him?”

Montparnasse raises an eyebrow at him. “Thought about it, but your shower really is too small to do anything comfortably.”

“And we’ll just file that in the bank of pervy shit I didn’t need to know.”

“It’s useful information. Of course, you’d have already known it if you’d bothered to get laid in the last year.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes and offers up a lazy, “Fuck off,” because he has gotten laid in the last year, just not much. The combination of depression, alcoholism, and drunken hook-ups is a recipe for a shit storm, and something he tries to avoid. He doesn’t really do casual sex anymore and he knows he's nothing that anyone would ever consider “relationship material.” (He cuts off his train of thought before it can wander too closely to wondering what Enjolras would consider relationship material.)

Montparnasse walks past him and into the kitchen and Grantaire hears him paw through the fridge. A moment later, he hears the oh so familiar sound of a beer bottle opening.

“Sure, Parnasse,” Grantaire says loudly. “I don’t mind if you help yourself to my beer.”

When he takes a seat at the kitchen table, Montparnasse flips him off. His expression is smug when he takes a swig of beer.

“So,” Grantaire says, putting aside his sketchbook. Jehan usually takes long showers—always blames it on how long his hair is—so he knows that he has at least twenty minutes to talk to Montparnasse alone. “Do you want to tell me what they hell happened last night?”

Montparnasse gives him a cold look. He’s always been an expert at cold looks. “Do you want to tell me why the hell it’s any of your business?”

“It becomes my business when Jehan shows up at my apartment on the verge of a fucking panic attack because some asshole you hang out with decided it’d be a good idea to shove him around and threaten to rape him while you did nothing to stop him.”

“You sound just like Ponine, you know that? Gueulemer was just joking around.”

“Maybe I sound like Eponine because Eponine makes a good fucking point. I don’t care if Gueulemer was just joking around. I don’t know if you knew this, but jokes aren’t funny when they make people have panic attacks.”

“He’s been anxious all week because of that shit with his dad. Something was bound to set him off eventually.”

“I fail to see how that makes it okay.”

“What the fuck do you want me to say? It’s not like I like seeing him like that, but panic attacks are kind of part of the territory when you’re dating someone with a fucking anxiety disorder!”

“You know what else is part of the territory? Not letting your fucknut friends do things and say things that trigger him like that!”

“He would have been able to shrug him off if it weren’t for the shit with his dad and Thanksgiving.”

“Disregarding the whole rape threat thing for a moment, do you really think he would have been able to shrug it off after Gueulemer tore up his poetry notebook?”

“That? Shit, dude, it’s just a bunch of words scribbled on paper. It’s really not that big of a deal. He has them all typed up on his laptop anyway.”

“To Jehan, it is a big deal,” Grantaire says. “After knowing him for almost four years, you’d think you’d have figured that one out by now.”

“Artists,” he says dismissively. “You’re all so fucking sentimental. It was a piece of shit notebook. It cost, what? Five bucks? Like I said, not a big fucking deal.” He sets the beer bottle on the table, looks at for a moment, then says, “Was he really that upset about the notebook?”

It’s the first time in the whole conversation that Montparnasse looks anything remotely remorseful. Even then, Grantaire’s not sure if it’s remorseful enough.

“Yeah, he was.”

“Shit. I’ll get him a new one.”

“Don’t bother,” he says. “I already fixed his old one.”

“Thanks,” Montparnasse says.

“I didn't do it for you and it's not like I mind doing stuff like that for him. But let’s be clear on something—if anything like this happens again or if you let Gueulemer anywhere near him, Eponine getting your balls in a jar will the least of your worries, got it?”

Montparnasse levels a look at him. “You don’t know me well enough if you think I’m going to let someone else fuck over my boyfriend.”

His words aren’t as comforting as perhaps they should be, but Grantaire doesn’t get a chance to follow up because Jehan has emerged from the bathroom. He’s wearing yesterday’s clothes and he’s got a towel around his shoulders to soak up the excess water from his dripping wet hair. He raises an eyebrow when he sees the beer bottle on the table. “It’s a bit early to drink, don’t you think?”

“I’m trying to avoid a bitch of a hangover right now,” Montparnasse says.

“I suppose that’s fair,” Jehan says, looking between Grantaire and Montparnasse. “Are you ready to go? We’ve probably intruded on Grantaire’s hospitality long enough.”

“You’re always welcome here,” Grantaire says.

But Montparnasse gets to his feet. “Let me take a piss and then we can go,” he says. “You always take so fucking long in the bathroom.”

“Sorry,” Jehan says with a slight smile. Montparnasse kisses him when he passes and once he’s gone, Jehan smiles and takes a seat next to Grantaire. His eyes look a little bloodshot and his expression is a little pinched, but he looks far better than he did last night. “Did you and Mont have a good talk?” he asks.

“How did you know?”

“I’m not stupid,” he says. “I knew you were going to want to talk to him about what happened last night.”

He nods. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he says. “I’m not...I’m not a hundred percent yet—and I don’t think I will be until after Thanksgiving, to be honest—but I’m much better than I was last night. I’m sorry that I worried you.”

“You worried all of us,” he says. “Not that we blame you for it, but you might want to text Courf, let him know that you’re doing better. He was kind of freaked last night.”

“Courf is a remarkable friend. People like that don’t come around very often.” Jehan sighs a little and sinks back in his chair. “I think he’s starting to get the wrong impression of Mont, though.”

“Oh?”

“You know things have been weird. Mont and I haven’t been on the same page since he went missing, and Courf and I have talked about it—and now, with all that drama last night, I think he thinks things between Mont and I are far worse than they are.”

“Are things bad?”

“They’re weird,” he says. “Like I told you. But we’re working on it.”

“What about all the stuff that happened last night?”

“Mont and I have talked about it,” he says. “It’s going to be fine.”

“What did you talk about?”

Jehan shrugs. “Just ground rules, you know? Gueulemer’s not allowed over when I’m home anymore, and Mont’s going to get our spare key back from him. That sort of thing.”

Grantaire can feel his eyes go wide and he’s sure if he could see his own face he’d look ridiculous. “He had a fucking key to your place?”

“Sometimes Mont keeps drugs at our place before he can get them moved the warehouse. Gueulemer having a key just made sense at the time. He needed access to it.”

“Drugs? Shit, Jehan, it’s a miracle neither of you have been arrested yet. You can’t—”

Jehan just smiles. “Grantaire, it’s okay. I’m okay.”

Tension in his chest that he was unaware of feeling suddenly eases. Jehan has always been honest with him and Grantaire has never had to worry about Jehan saying he’s fine when he’s struggling to keep his head above water. If Jehan says he’s okay, then he’s okay. Or will be okay. It’s a simple affirmation, but it relieves him of a world of worry. “You’ll let me know if that changes?”

“Of course,” Jehan says. When Montparnasse reappears, Jehan smiles at him and Grantaire, not for the first time, finds it strange how easily Jehan trusts. Whatever the two of them are working through and however shitty Montparnasse acted last night, Jehan still trusts that they’ll work it out. It’s not the safest way to live, but Jehan always claims that it’s the most fulfilling.

“Ready to go home, bird?” Montparnasse asks.

“Would you mind taking me by campus first?” Jehan asks with a hopeful smile.

“I thought you already missed your classes today.”

“Yeah, but this is the fourth day I’ve missed in two weeks and some serious ass kissing would not go amiss on my part.”

Montparnassse shakes his head but offers his hand to help Jehan out of his chair.  Jehan pauses to press a kiss to Grantaire’s kiss and say, “Thanks for everything last night.” Grantaire waves him off because really, helping Jehan out is the least he can do for his friend and when Jehan and Montparnasse leave, Grantaire’s feeling a little bit better about the whole mess from last night. He’s still pissed that it happened at all, of course, and if Gueulemer so much as looks at Jehan wrong, Grantaire is calling the fucking cops, but Jehan seems to be doing so much better now and that’s all Grantaire can really ask. If they can get Jehan through Thanksgiving with his parents, Grantaire feels confident that everything else will work out for Jehan just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for any mistakes in this chapter. This was an emergency, written last minute chapter, so it hasn't gotten the same amount of tender loving revision as other chapters. I tried to go over it as much as I could, so hopefully it's not a mess.
> 
> Anyway, thank you, as always, for your support. You guys rock. (I know I say this every chapter, but repetition does not make my words any less true.)
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Friday :)


	34. Chapter Thirty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanksgiving with Courfeyrac, Jehan, and Enjolras. Things don't go as planned.

As planned, Courfeyrac picks Jehan up outside Grantaire and Eponine’s apartment on Thanksgiving. Jehan had only given him vague reasons for wanting to be picked up here instead of his and Montparnasse’s place (“It’s just...easier,” was the prime reason Jehan had offered), but Courfeyrac doesn’t exactly mind because the more time Jehan spends away from Montparnasse’s friends, the better Courfeyrac feels.

Jehan waits for him on the front step to Grantaire and Eponine’s apartment building and damn he looks good. Like, really good. He’s wearing a sedate three-piece suit and he’s got a scarf wrapped around his neck and an overcoat draped over his arm because the sun hasn’t set yet and it’s not too cold but it will be tonight when they come back. But all of his clothes are tailored to fit, and Courfeyrac has forgotten that this body is what exists under all of Jehan’s oversized sweaters.

He parks the car by the curb and gets out so he can open the passenger side door for Jehan.

“You didn’t have to—”

“It’s my pleasure,” he says with a smile as Jehan climbs into the passenger seat. He closes the door then rushes around to the other side of the car and gets in. “The venue’s about an hour outside of the city,” Courfeyrac says. “I hope you don’t mind the drive.”

Already, Jehan is flipping through radio stations. He stops when he hears classical music. “Are we taking the highway? Because I might puke and—”

“What?” Courfeyrac says. He’s driving a rental car because as much as he would _love_ to show up in his beat-up 1997 Ford Escort (which he bought and paid for without his parents’ help, thank you very much), he does understand that there’s a certain amount of propriety expected at this dinner and while he knows his family wouldn’t care if he showed up riding a moose, he thinks Jehan’s dad is probably a stickler for appearances and doesn’t want to do anything that might make the night more uncomfortable for his friend.

“I just… I throw up when I’m nervous,” Jehan says. “And pulling over on the highway is such a pain. So if we are taking the highway, I just want to, you know, prepare myself to not throw up.”

“It’s all back country roads,” Courfeyrac says, shaking his head a little at the idea of Jehan preparing himself to _not_ throw up. “Once we’re out of the city, I can pull over whenever you need me to. You can puke to your heart’s content.”

“Comforting,” Jehan mutters.

“Hopefully it won’t come to that, though,” he says. “I can do whatever you need me to help you relax. I can even do a song and dance number, if you think it’d help.”

A flicker of a smile crosses Jehan’s face. “Only if I can record it and post it online.”

“You say that like that would deter me from doing it. I like what you did with your hair, by the way.”

Instead of being pulled back into its usual braid, it’s been done in some sort of unobtrusive up-do that pulls his hair away from his face and up off his neck.

“Eponine did it,” he says. He presses his fingers against it, as though to check that it’s still in place. “You really like it, though? You don’t think it looks weird or anything? It’s just my dad really doesn’t like me having long hair. I was just going to have Eponine cut it all off—it just seemed easier that way—but I couldn’t go through with it and Eponine suggested this as an alternative—”

“It looks really good, Jehan,” he says. He hates how unsure of himself Jehan sounds, like one small criticism would shatter his self-esteem. He hates even more that Jehan’s _dad_ is the source of the insecurity. He reaches away from the steering wheel to pull Jehan’s hand away from his hair. “Honestly. It’s unobtrusive and conservative and it’s practically impossible to tell how long your hair actually is.”

Jehan nods but he still looks unconvinced.

“I know it’s hard, but try to relax, okay? Me and Enj—we’ll be with you the entire dinner, okay? Or at least one of us will. Your dad’s not just going to be able to bully you around—and heaven help him if he tries when either of my parents are around. They don’t tolerate homophobic shit from that crowd—well, from any crowd really, but especially that one.”

“Yeah?”

“My parents are obscenely liberal for this crowd,” Courfeyrac says. “I used to joke that my sister and I didn’t give them a choice when it came to their views on social politics. In the space of a month, they found out that their fifteen year old son was bisexual and their seventeen year old daughter was pregnant.”

“Oh,” Jehan says. “I didn’t realize—are you an uncle, then?”

“I’m not,” Courfeyrac says. He flexes his hands against the steering wheel. “Cass—my sister—knew from the beginning that she didn’t want an abortion but that she wouldn’t be able to give the baby the life it deserved, so she set up a private adoption. The adoptive parents were really good people and we all really liked them, but my sister miscarried at the end of the first trimester. She was pretty shaken up about it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was a hard time for my family, but I like to think we came out better for it. My sister and the woman who was going to adopt the baby are still really close. I think she sees Cass more than I do.” He shrugs. “With those skeletons in our closet, my family is pretty staunchly liberal when it comes to social issues, and my dad especially can get pretty vocal at things like this when the need arises. The funny thing is is that everyone just sort of lets him. I think it’s because he’s French. He moved here when he was in college and then he and my mom eloped. No one really knows what to do with him.”

This makes Jehan laugh and he slumps a little into the passenger’s seat. Courfeyrac smiles to himself, glad that he could get Jehan to relax a little. He pulls onto the road that will take him out of the city.

“Now exiting New York,” he says in his best flight attendant voice. “Next stop: Purgatory.”

* * *

 

Purgatory is probably too harsh a term, mostly because Courfeyrac finds events like these legitimately amusing (everyone is so stuffy!) and because they have valet parking, which is nice. Inside, everything is decorated with warm fall colors, which is a stark contrast to the black suits that absolutely every man in the building wears. The women, at least, can choose cocktail dresses that complement the decor, but the men just look like penguins.

Before the dinner is the cocktail hour—further proof that this isn’t purgatory because he’s pretty sure there’s no booze or delightful _hors d'oeuvres_ like the mini BLTs that he cannot get enough of in purgatory—and Courfeyrac offers to get Jehan some champagne or something stronger since he knows the wait staff will card them both.

Jehan shakes his head and settles for sparkling cider. “I shouldn’t anyway,” he says. “The last thing I need is for my dad to see me drunk.”

As a sign of solidarity, Courfeyrac decides to forego the champagne as well. Drinks can come later. He claps Jehan on the shoulder and says, “Let’s go find Enj.”

Enjolras is being difficult, apparently, and refuses to be found. In the process of looking for him, Courfeyrac points out other people of note to Jehan. A senator and her husband. A recently widowed New York State chief justice.  A noted fashion designer and her most recent arm candy.

“Those are my parents over there,” he says when he spots them across the room. “And that’s Enjolras’s mom that they’re talking to.”

She has a martini in hand and Courfeyrac suspects from her body language that she’s already drunk, which isn’t really surprising. Courfeyrac can count on one hand the number of times he’s spoken to Enjolras’s mom when she wasn’t drunk. From what he’s heard from Enjolras and Combeferre, she’s been like this since Enjolras was little—as though alcohol and prescription pills were her personal coping mechanism to deal with an emotionally distant husband.

He scans the room for Enjolras’s dad, knowing that if one of his friend’s parents are here, the other one is too. He spots him a dozen feet away, talking to a man he doesn’t recognize.

“And that’s Enj’s dad,” he says, gesturing over to the two men. “I don’t know who that is that he’s talking to.”

“That would be my dad,” Jehan says.

Now that it’s pointed out to him, Courfeyrac can see the family resemblance. They have similar coloring and their hair is the exact same auburn-chestnut blend. They have a similar facial structure, too, though that’s harder to tell because Jehan is almost always smiling and his dad’s face seems to be set in a perpetual frown.

“He looks charming,” Courfeyrac says.

Mr. Prouvaire spots them and waves Jehan forward. Jehan looks like he’d rather be swallowed up by the floor.

“I don’t know what he wants from me,” Jehan says, but he walks forward all the same, as though he doesn’t know how to refuse his dad anything.

“It’s probably just introductions,” Courfeyrac says. He hates the fragility in Jehan’s voice. “I’ll be with you the entire time. It’ll be fine.”

Mr. Prouvaire makes introductions between Jehan and Mr. Enjolras and both of the older men disregard Courfeyrac’s presence completely.

“It’s about time you arrived, Jean,” Mr. Prouvaire says. “Your mother and I have been here for nearly an hour already.”

“That would be my fault,” Courfeyrac lies with a smile. “I took a wrong turn trying to get out of the city and we ended up stuck in traffic for a bit longer than anticipated.”

Mr. Prouvaire turns to Jehan. “And who’s this?”

“This is Michel Courfeyrac,” Jehan says. His voice is quieter than usual. “He, uh, he goes to school with me.”

Courfeyrac inches closer to Jehan to offer support. “We carpooled,” he said. “Better for the environment.”

Mr. Prouvaire looks at him with an air of distinct disapproval. “And I suppose you study the same useless drivel as my son?”

Courfeyrac is so taken aback by the man’s profound lack of tact that he’s at a loss for words.

“Young Courfeyrac is actually pre-law,” Mr. Enjolras says. “Same as my son.”

Courfeyrac forces himself to smile. Honestly, he’s a little surprised that Mr. Enjolras actually (1) remembers him and (2) remembers that he and Enjolras are on the same track at school. In fact, he’s surprised that he even remembers what Enjolras studies at all. The man rarely pays attention to anything outside his own business ventures. “Pre-law is mostly useless drivel,” Courfeyrac says. “Sometimes I’d much rather be taking some of the classes that Jehan does.”

“That’s because Jean went for the soft option when it comes to academics,” Mr. Prouvaire says. “His classes are probably infinitely easier than your own.”

“I don’t know,” Courfeyrac says. He can feel his temper rising and his voice is sharper than usual. “The other day he was telling me about T.S. Eliot and it sounded pretty damn complex to me.”

Jehan gives a fraction of a smile. “That’s just Eliot though,” he says. “My dad’s right. English lit is a soft option. I’d probably be much better off switching to pre-law or something.”

Mr. Prouvaire scoffs a little, like he’s not sure that Jehan is even capable of that. It makes Courfeyrac want to hit him.

Courfeyrac reminds himself to keep smiling. “We’ve got enough lawyers, Jehan,” he says, forcing his voice to sound light. He puts his hand against Jehan’s back, reminding his friend that he’s still here. He doesn’t miss the way Mr. Prouvaire’s eyes narrow once Courfeyrac has touched Jehan. “We need more poets. You bring beauty to the world. All I’ll ever be good for is fodder for evil lawyer jokes.”

Courfeyrac forces himself to exchange a few more pleasantries with them, during which Jehan is mostly silent and doesn’t make eye contact with anyone, before he manages to find a polite way to bow them both out of the conversation. Once he has, he gently steers Jehan away from his dad and once he’s certain they’re out of earshot, he says, “Your dad is an ass.”

Jehan shoots him an irritated look. “What? Did you think I was making all this up the whole time?”

“Of course not,” he says. “But it’s one thing to be told that someone’s an ass and it’s another thing entirely to see that ass in person. Hell, he’s worse than Enj’s dad.”

At that, Jehan shrugs. “I don’t know about that. His dad seemed cold. At least mine pays attention.”

But Courfeyrac shakes his head. “Enj’s dad is distant and emotionally dead, yes, but—it’s like this. Mr. Enjolras can’t ever be bothered to give any fucks about anything, but with your dad, he gives fucks—loud, awful, rude fucks—about everything and he doesn’t care who knows it.”

Jehan rubs the back of his neck. “Still, it can’t have been easy for Enjolras to have grown up with some like that as his dad.”

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “You’re kind of a saint, did you know that?” He spots his parents chatting by themselves and he takes Jehan by the elbow and steers him in their direction. “Look, my parents are free. Why don’t we go talk to them?”

“I don’t want to be a bother to them.”

“Nonsense,” Courfeyrac says. “They’re going to love you.”

He steers Jehan towards his parents, grabbing them each a glass of champagne along the way because he doesn’t care that Jehan doesn’t want to drink in front of his dad—at this point, they both need some alcohol in them to get through the night. Courfeyrac greets his mom with a kiss on the cheek and his dad with a clap on the shoulder.

“This is my friend Jehan Prouvaire,” he says, prodding Jehan forward to shake hands. “We go to school together.”

His dad shakes Jehan’s hand. “You must be Jacques Prouvaire’s son.”

Jehan nods. “That’s right.”

“I’m so sorry for you.” His tone tells Courfeyrac _exactly_ what his dad thinks of Mr. Prouvaire.

“Henri,” his mother snaps, but Courfeyrac laughs, trying to put Jehan at ease.

“Already met him, have you, then?” he asks his dad.

“We had an…enlightening conversation about economic inequality,” Henri says, but he smiles at Jehan. “But I promise not to hold that against you.”

“What are you majoring in, Jehan?” his mom asks, trying to tactfully steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Oh, I’m just an English lit major,” he says.

Courfeyrac rolls his eyes. “He’s also a creative writing minor,” he says. “Jehan here is a poet.”

Jehan shoots him another annoyed look.

“Oh, how lovely,” she says. “I’ve always adored poetry and hoped that I might pass on the love to one of my children, but it didn’t take for either of them.”

“Hey, I’ve been to some of his poetry readings,” Courfeyrac says, smiling at his mom. “I’m downright cultured.”

“By some of, he means one,” Jehan says. “And I think he stumbled into it by accident.”

Courfeyrac laughs. “You wound me.”

“Well, one exposure to poetry—even if it was an accident—is a start,” his mom says. She’s always had a knack for putting people at ease and Courfeyrac can practically see some of the tension leave Jehan. “What’s your favorite class this semester, Jehan?”

He smiles and Courfeyrac relaxes because he knows Jehan feels much more at ease when he can talk about something he loves.

“I’m taking a comparative lit class that focuses on medieval European literature,” he says. “We’re doing Dante’s _Inferno_ , which is beautiful, of course, it’s just a shame that we don’t have time to study it alongside _Purgatorio_ and _Paradiso_ because really you don’t get the full effect without reading all three.”

His mom and Jehan continue to talk poetry and literature and Courfeyrac answers his dad’s questions about school and classes and his friends.

“Have you seen Cassandra at all?” Courfeyrac asks when there’s a lull in the conversation. He still hasn’t caught sight of his sister or Enjolras even though dinner is going to be served in the next fifteen minutes. “I wanted to introduce her to Jehan.”

His dad smiles. “Last I saw her, she was off chasing Enjolras, saying deliberately outlandish things to try to make him blush. I think he tried to head her off by ducking into the bathroom, but I doubt that deterred her.”

Courfeyrac laughs. “She always plays the best games.”

“Sounds like something you would do,” Jehan mutters.

Courfeyrac smirks at him. “Who do you think told her to do it?”

They’re ushered into the dining room not long after, not giving Courfeyrac the chance to find Cassandra or Enjolras. The seats at the table are assigned and Courfeyrac is seated next to his sister and some ancient politician’s equally ancient wife, and his friends are both seated a bit farther down the table. His dad is sitting close enough to make conversation with both Enjolras’s and Jehan’s fathers and Jehan and Enjolras are seated almost across the table from each other, which makes Courfeyrac happy. He doesn’t like the thought of leaving Jehan that close to his dad without any sort of back up or reassurance. Enjolras might not be the best at reading emotional cues, but he knows what it’s like to have a difficult father-son relationship. Enjolras will be able to distract Jehan if things go south.

If he leans just so around his sister, he can keep an eye on Jehan himself.

“Is that the boy you’re in love with?” Cassandra asks as the first course is served.

She must have caught him staring.

“I’m not in love with anyone.”

Cassandra laughs at him. “Courf, darling, you haven’t not been in love with someone since you were seven.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “So I like him,” he says. “He’s taken.”

“Is he married?”

“He’s nineteen, Cass, so no, he’s not married.”

“Then he’s not taken,” she says.

“I’m not some kind of homewrecker,” he says. “And I’m not going to be someone else’s mistress.”

“Mistress?” she says with a teasing smile. “Is this one of your new kinks?”

“Oh shut up.” He glances across the table and is grateful that no one else seems to be paying an attention to what he and his sister are saying. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” she says. “It’s just not like you to not chase after someone you like.”

“This is different.”

“What you mean is that _he’s_ different.”

“I just want him to be happy,” he says. “And yeah, I think I could make him happy, but right now he says his boyfriend makes him happy. I’m not going to ruin that.”

“You’re a better man than people give you credit for,” she says.

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

She just laughs at him again.

During the meal, Courfeyrac tries to keep track of how the meal is going for his friends. Enjolras is sitting near some young politicians and has already joined in on their conversation. Courfeyrac has no doubt that what Enjolras says to them is controversial but he also knows that Enjolras is probably impressing all of them. It’s hard not to be impressed by Enjolras.

Enjolras’s dad, of course, ignores him the entire meal—as he did the year before, and the year before that. Courfeyrac knows that that complete lack of regard bothers Enjolras more than he cares to admit, that part of his insane drive to always be working and achieving was cultivated by a father who never noticed him.

At the very least, Enjolras seems to be weathering the dinner better than Jehan, who is seated next to his father. Twice, Courfeyrac has watched Jehan try to inject himself into the conversations around him, only to be dismissed out of hand by his father. It’s gotten to the point where Jehan just sits there quietly and doesn’t lift his eyes off the food that he picks at.

Every so often, Enjolras will turn his attention to Jehan and try to draw him into the conversation—and Courfeyrac knows that Jehan would be just as capable of holding his own in that conversation as Enjolras is—but Jehan usually glances at his father and then says something quietly before turning his attention back to his food.

All in all, though, the dinner could be going much worse. And as much as Courfeyrac wishes he were seated closer to his friends, he’s just grateful that things are going smoothly—if not entirely pleasantly. His gratitude turns to regret around the third course, when some idiot down the table thinks that _now_ would be a good time to debate marriage equality.

Courfeyrac is entirely unsurprised that Mr. Prouvaire’s stance on the matter is firmly in the negative. He’s equally unsurprised to see that his own father is becoming more and more perturbed by the conversation at hand.

“It’s not even a religious matter,” Jacques Prouvaire says in response to someone’s question. Courfeyrac can tell by the way that his dad as set down his fork and knife that shit’s about to hit the fan. “Even from a sociological standpoint, homosexuality is just not a viable option. Normal heterosexual relationships are the only way for us to reproduce, and if we just let the gays go off and have sex with each other, than we’re neglecting our duty to produce a sustainable population.”

Courfeyrac looks at Jehan, who has pushed his plate away from him and doesn’t lift his gaze off the table.

The man across the table from Jacques Prouvaire disagrees. “That would be supposing that the entire world population were gay,” he says.

“It’s a growing epidemic,” he says. “And the liberal media agenda isn’t helping.”

Cassandra leans in close to him. “Is this guy for real?” she asks.

Courfeyrac nods and drains the champagne glass in front of him. He wonders if there’s something stronger to drink around here.      

“Dad’s going hit the roof any moment now,” she says. “Look at him.”

Courferyac leans around her to see his dad drumming his fingers against the table. He and his sister both recognize the sign of his rising temper. He peers down the table a little farther, looking for Enjolras. He’s pulled himself out of his political debate but surprisingly he looks more concerned for Jehan than he does about setting Mr. Prouvaire straight.

“I’m not saying that I support gay marriage,” the other man says. “I believe in the traditional family, but I think the gays should have the same job security as everyone else. I heard that in some states, it’s still legal to fire someone just because they’re gay.”

“As it should be,” Jacques Prouvaire says. “They’re lazy degenerates—not to mention, they’re not family people. It’s not like they have to worry about supporting a family. Fast food and menial labor should be enough to support them and their depraved lifestyle.”

“Actually,” Enjolras says, “plenty of same-sex couples have families or want to have families.”

Jacques Prouvaire ignores him. “Although, I’d be surprised if that sort can even hold down minimum wage jobs,” he says off-handedly, stabbing a piece of turkey on his plate. Beside him, Jehan looks defeated. “That lot’s not very reliable—most of them are weak and cowardly. Don’t have much of a work ethic.”

Henri Courfeyrac clears his throat. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you on that count, Mr. Prouvaire,” he says. “Actually, I’m going to have to disagree with you on all counts. My son came out as bisexual to my wife and me when he was just fifteen. It was perhaps one of the bravest acts I have ever seen, and since then, Michel has done nothing to make me think that he’s inherently weak or lazy or degenerate. I have always been—and will always be—immensely proud of him. Just as I am of any young person who has the courage to be their true self, despite overwhelming opposition they might face from society.”

He’s looking at Jehan for that last bit, though Jehan continues to stare at the table cloth.

Mr. Prouvaire just scoffs. “Well of course you’d feel that way,” he says. “Given your options.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Henri Courfeyrac says.

“Just that between being proud of a bisexual son and the daughter who was such a whore that she got herself knocked up when she was a teenager, I’d be proud of the bisexual son too. At least he still likes women, so he’s not a complete failure.”

Silence.

Courfeyrac feels like the air has been knocked out of lungs and he wants to get to his feet, to shout at that man and probably hit him too, but he has no words. He doesn’t even have air. Beside him, his sister pushes away from the table and storms out of the room. He should go after her, make sure she’s okay. He should stay here and punch that man’s teeth in.

His parents seems to be in just as much shock as he is and no one can pull themselves together and tell Jacques Prouvaire just what a son of a bitch he really is.

Except for Jehan, who looks up from the table cloth at last. He looks half-terrified, but completely determined. “That was uncalled for, Dad,” he says. His voice is quiet but steady and Courfeyrac could kiss him right now. “And extremely inappropriate. You should apologize.”

“Keep your mouth shut, Jean,” Jacques Prouvaire hisses at him. “No one asked for your opinion.”

“I just—”

“No,” he says. “No one wants to hear what a little queer like you has to say.”

Jehan winces at the words. “You were out of line,” he says, this time a little louder, a little stronger. “You owe the Courfeyracs an apology.”

His dad cuts him a slashing look. “We’ll talk about this at home.”

Jehan licks his lips. “But I’m not going home,” he says. His voice wavers a little, like he’s not used to talking back to his father. “I’m going back to the city tonight.”

“We’ll talk about this at home,” he says again, in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

“No, Dad—” His eyes are wide with panic, but his voice is determined.

“Damn it, Jean,” the man snaps. Again, Jehan winces. “You will not argue with me. You’re coming home with your mother and me tonight and you’ll keep or mouth shut, or so help me, I swear I will—”

“That is enough,” Henri Courfeyrac says, slamming his hand against the table.

“Excuse me?”

“It was bad enough to listen to you spew vile about my family, but it’s nothing I haven’t heard before and it’s nothing we can’t overcome,” he says. “But I will not sit here and listen to you talk that way to your own child.”

“It is none of your business what goes on in my home.”

“You make it my business when you start threatening your son in public—at a charity event, no less.”

While his dad and Jehan’s continue to argue, Courfeyrac leans in as much as he can, trying to get a better view of Jehan. He thinks the younger man might be on the verge of hyperventilating because his shoulders are shaking, but he’s not sitting close enough to do anything about it and anything he might say would be lost in the sound of his father’s defense.

But Enjolras is close at hand, and he’s leaning across the table and he takes Jehan’s hand in his own. Satisfied that Enjolras has things in hand with Jehan, Courfeyrac excuses himself from the table and goes in search of his sister.

It takes a while to track her down, but he finds his sister in a women’s restroom and he’s relieved to see that she seems to be more angry than upset. She doesn’t look surprised to see him.

“That man is an asshole,” she says when he closes the door behind him.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Like I haven’t heard people talk about what a whore I am before now,” she says. “Or did you forget what my senior year of high school was like?”

“Are you okay?” he asks again. He knows his sister well enough to know that she routinely uses flippancy to hide deeper wounds. Hell, he does the same thing half the time.

She shakes her head. “Teenager or not—whore or not—I wanted to have that baby. I wanted that—and that miscarriage was still the worst moment of my life.”

“I know,” he says. It was one of the worst moments of his life too, since he was the one who found her sobbing in their shared bathroom, covered in blood that she was desperately trying to stop.

“And I am fucking sick to death of arrogant assholes throwing that in my face—like just because I was a teenager that my pain was somehow less than that of other women who’ve had miscarriages! It’s appalling and quite frankly it’s none of their damn business and I fucking hate them for it!”

He sees her lip tremble and he pulls her into a hug before she can start to cry in earnest. “When we go back out there,” he says because they will be going back out there. Hiding is for weaker people, not for Courfeyracs. “We can give the asshat hell. He certainly deserves it.”

He smiles when Cass gives a sniffling sort of laugh against his shoulder.

Their hug is interrupted when Enjolras pokes his head in, completely unconcerned that he’s entering a woman’s restroom. “Thank goodness, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Courferyac is about to make a crack about how the woman’s bathroom should have been an obvious choice, but then he notices the look on Enjolras’s face. “Is everything okay?”

“I can’t find Jehan,” he says. “He left the table a few minutes after you did. He told me he was just going to step in the hall, but then he didn’t come back. I’ve tried calling him, but it goes straight to voicemail.”

“Shit,” Courfeyrac says. He pulls back from his sister and rubs his hand over his face.

“Go,” Cassandra says. “I’m fine. I think your friend needs you more than I do.”

He gives his sister’s hand one last squeeze and follows Enjolras out of the bathroom. “Where’ve you looked?” he asks.

“I checked the halls, the ballroom, the bathrooms. I asked the wait staff if they’d seen him, but no one has.”

“Shit,” Courfeyrac says again. He racks his mind, trying to think where Jehan might go. “Did you check the balcony?”

“It’s freezing outside,” Enjolras says.

He shrugs. “Maybe he wants the fresh air? We should at least check.”

That’s all the encouragement Enjolras needs and together they rush towards the balcony off the side of the ballroom where the cocktail party had been held.

Jehan is leaning against the balustrade. He’s got a lit joint in one hand and his phone in the other and he’s babbling almost hysterically to whoever’s on the other line.

“I’m such a fuck up,” he gasps between hits. “I can’t believe—we said we weren’t going to anymore, but he just—I just got so upset—I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry—I can’t—Shit, I knew this would happen—He just got so angry and I couldn’t breathe and—”

“Shit, Jehan,” Courfeyrac says, shrugging out of his suit coat. “You’re shivering. You’re going to get frostbite out here.”

Surprised, Jehan’s phone slips out of his fingers and it only takes a glance for Courfeyrac and Enjolras to come up with a plan of action. Courfeyrac goes straight to Jehan, pulling him away from the balustrade and into an embrace. He wraps his suit coat around Jehan’s shoulders and takes care not to singe himself on the butt of Jehan’s joint. Meanwhile, Enjolras scoops up Jehan’s phone.

“This Enjolras, can I ask who’s speaking?”

Courfeyrac rubs Jehan’s back. “Are you okay?”

“Grantaire?” Enjolras says. “Yeah, Courf and I are both here. Courf is with him now—”

Jehan shakes his head and sags against Courfeyrac like he’s suddenly sapped for energy. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“What are you sorry for?” he asks.

Jehan takes another drag from the joint and lets it out slowly. “I promised R I wouldn’t do this anymore.”

“What? Smoke?”

Jehan nods. “We said we would stop together, but I couldn’t. I can’t. And I’m sorry. I just—shit, Courf, I—”

“It’s okay,” Courfeyrac says rubbing Jehan’s back still. But it’s not okay, not really. It’s not okay that Jehan’s dad is such a shit-face that he reduces Jehan to this. It’s not okay Jehan feels like he needs to apologize for being upset after his dad acted the way he did.

“It’s not okay,” Jehan says. “He shouldn’t have said what he did about you and your sister. He shouldn’t have said anything about it and I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he says. He wonders if he should take the joint from Jehan, but it seems to be calming him down and right now Courfeyrac can’t quite bring himself to care about maladaptive coping mechanisms. He glances over at Enjolras, who’s still speaking with Grantaire on the phone. “What can I do for you right now?” he asks quietly. “Do you want to head back home? I can call Montparnasse on my phone if you want to talk to him.” The offer feels like glass in his throat, but if Montparnasse will help Jehan, then Coufeyrac will drive to his apartment and beg for his assistance.

“Home is too far away,” he says. “And the dinner’s not over. I don’t want to be a bother.”

“It’s not a bother at all,” he says. “If you don’t want to leave, I’m sure the three of us can scope out some unused room or something. And I know I can convince the wait staff to bring us some food, if you’re feeling up to eating. Enjolras and I just want you to feel better. You know that right?”

Jehan doesn’t say anything. He just sags against Courfeyrac’s chest. Courfeyrac wraps his arm around Jehan’s shoulders.

At least he’s not crying. Courfeyrac doesn’t think he’d be able to restrain himself from telling Jacques Prouvaire exactly what he thinks about him if Jehan were crying.

Enjolras joins them a moment later, pocketing Jehan’s phone. He gently puts his hand on Jehan’s shoulder. “Hey, Jehan?” he says softly. “Grantaire said it might be best if we just get you away from here for a bit. How does that sound?”

“The city is too far away,” he says.

“But Courf’s house is only about twenty minutes from here,” Enjolras says. “Your parents won’t mind us crashing for a bit, will they, Courf?”

“Of course not,” he says. “How about it, Flower Boy? We can head back to my old place and we can watch Disney or really bad musicals and I can show you embarrassing pictures of Marius from high school.”

“We can probably stay the whole night, if you like,” Enjolras says.

“I don’t want to be a bother.”

“It’s no bother,” Enjolras says.

“Seriously, dude,” Courfeyrac says. “I love showing off my house to people. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to get out of these stuffy suits. I know you don’t like wearing a tie, no matter how sexy you might look in it.”

He feels a knot of tension ease in his chest when that gets Jehan to offer up a flicker of a smile.

“You really don’t mind?” Jehan asks. “And your parents won’t mind?”

“Of course not,” Courfeyrac says. He wraps an arm around Jehan’s shoulders and steers him back towards the door. “C’mon. I think we’ve all had enough of this party.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really don't know how this chapter got as long as it did haha. It just sort of ran away from me.
> 
> Anyway, thank you all so much for being awesome. I love hearing from you guys. Your continued support is such a boon to me :)
> 
> The next chapter (Thanksgiving with Grantaire, Eponine, and Combeferre) will be up on Tuesday.


	35. Chapter Thirty-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanksgiving with Grantaire, Eponine, and Combeferre (and assorted relatives)

On Thanksgiving, Combeferre gives them all a ride to his childhood home. Grantaire isn’t surprised by the neighborhood Combeferre takes them to, even though Gavroche (who has been grumbling incessantly for the last half hour because Grantaire and Azelma both insisted that Gav take the middle seat because he’s significantly smaller than either of them) leans between the two front seats to get a better view of the houses through the windshield.

“These houses are _huge_ ,” he says.

And they are, especially compared to the apartment that Grantaire grew up in and the tiny motel-room-turned-apartment that the Thenardiers live in. The neighborhood isn’t quite as ritzy as the one Jehan grew up in, which doesn’t surprise Grantaire too much because Jehan comes from the sort of family that has a live-in maid and cook, and while Combeferre comes from a well-off family and his house was probably _massive_ for his family considering he’s an only child, his family still isn’t quite to the level of “obscenely wealthy” the way the Prouvaires are.

Grantaire grew up in a cramped apartment with a parking lot that served as a yard, and Jehan grew up in a fucking mansion, and it appears the Combeferre grew up with something a lot more than apartment but still significantly less than mansion, and Grantaire can imagine a small, be-speckled Combeferre lounging in the front yard or reading books on the front porch as a child.

He smiles when he remembers that Combeferre and Enjolras are childhood friends and thinks of a small bobble-headed Enjolras running around this neighborhood.

Combeferre’s house is tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac next to the neighborhood’s pool and tennis court. There are at least a dozen cars parked in the swimming pool parking lot.

“Are these all guests for your family’s Thanksgiving?” Eponine asks from the front seat.

“I think the green Suburban is for the neighbors,” Combeferre says, neatly pulling into a parking spot, “but yeah. All the rest of this is family.”

“Damn,” Eponine says.

Combeferre leans across the center console to kiss her on the cheek. “They’ll all love you,” he says.

Gavroche makes a disgusted sort of noise and hurries to scramble out of the car.

Grantaire gets out of the car and shoves his hands in his pockets. It’s hard not to feel a little like a third-wheel with this crowd. He knows Eponine thinks of him like a brother, so for her it’s only natural to have him come along with her younger siblings, but he doesn’t know that Combeferre’s family will see it quite the same way.

He can hear Combeferre now: _Oh hey, Mom and Dad, this is my girlfriend, Eponine, and her brother and sister. Oh, and yeah, this is Grantaire. He’s Eponine’s gay friend and he’s got a bit of drinking problem so keep him away from the liquor cabinet. Oh, and he has the world’s biggest crush on my best friend, so let’s just keep that in mind as we try to make him feel as uncomfortable as possible_.

Okay. He knows Combeferre would never say anything like that, not even in jest, but still. Now that the idea is in his head, he can’t quite shake it and he _really_ hopes that Combeferre’s the kind of family who’ll at least have some wine at dinner tonight, because he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to relax without _something_.

He’s startled when Azelma links her arm through his and pulls him in the direction of the house, trailing after Combeferre and Eponine, who walk hand-in-hand.

“One of us has to not be nervous,” Azelma says. “And it’s not going to be Eponine, because she’s practically peeing her pants over the idea that his family won’t like her and make him break up with her, so I nominate you.”

Grantaire looks at her. Azelma is a thin little thing and reminds him infinitely of Eponine at that age. Thin but tough, not the sort of girl you can push around. Eponine’s grown into herself more—she has more self-confidence that comes with four years of living on her own (and more importantly living outside her parents’ influence), but Azelma doesn’t have that quite yet. She has a sort of fragility to her, like she could take you down in a fight but if you compliment her she might start crying because she’s so unused to having anyone say anything nice to her.

He’s grateful that she’s here—he can hear himself now once the stereotypical _say what you’re thankful for_ begins, “I’m thankful for my best friend’s little sister because she forces me to man up.”—because he can’t wallow too much in self-pity if he wants to help her out.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he says. “Combeferre’s one of those guys who’s just nice. People like that don’t come from shitty families.”

“You came from a shitty family and you turned out okay.”

He laughs. It’s not exactly a happy sound. He should work on that. “If by okay you mean I’m a depressed alcoholic with no job prospects after graduation, then yes. I turned out great.”

Azelma smiles, making the resemblance between her and Eponine even more distinct. “Who needs job prospects?” she asks. “I wouldn’t like you as much if you were stuffed into some suit and stuck at a computer all day.”

“Well, at least someone feels that way.”

Combeferre holds the front open for all of them and inside someone—a small someone, who probably isn’t much younger than Gavroche—is waiting to take their coats and it’s all so damn _Leave it to Beaver_ that Grantaire nearly walks right back out the door because he doesn’t belong in places like this. In years past, he’s done Thanksgiving dinner with Eponine in their apartment and last year Jehan joined them with Montparnasse and afterwards Grantaire and Montparnasse went out and got completely shit-faced at some bar and it was a good time.

But he doesn’t really do family functions. He’s not even sure _what_ to do at family functions.

He hands off his ancient leather jacket to the kid, who’s practically falling over under the pile of coats, and suddenly Combeferre’s mom (Mrs. Combeferre? Grantaire is beginning to sympathize with Jehan’s complaint about all their friends going by their last names because when Grantaire thinks of someone called Mrs. Combeferre all he can see is his friend Combeferre in a frumpy dress and maybe an apron—and hey, this is an amusing game and when he gets the chance he should sketch this because Mrs. Bahorel is downright hilarious and let’s not even get started on Mrs. Enjolras) appears to make introductions.

Mrs. Combeferre—Grantaire _really_ needs to learn her first name—is a friendly looking woman in her late forties who seems absolutely thrilled that her son is bringing home a girl (and her dysfunctional family) for Thanksgiving. And she’s just as welcoming of him as she is of Eponine and her siblings, even though everyone else is wearing nice clothes and the best Grantaire could do for nice clothes was _clothes without paint on them_.

The rest of Combeferre’s relatives—an odd assortment of aunts and uncles and cousins, all of whom bear some degree of resemblance to Combeferre, which makes it _weird_ —are all just as welcoming of him and before dinner, he somehow finds himself wedged up against the counter talking to two of Combeferre’s aunts about art—and while he loves talking about art, this is all just too weird for him. He doesn’t know how to exist in formal, functional families. He doesn’t know how to interact with parents who aren’t going to start shouting (or worse) at their kids any minute and who aren’t drinking so much that they won’t even remember the holiday in the morning.

His only consolation is that he’s pretty sure Eponine, Azelma, and Gavroche are all as uncomfortable as he is. Azelma and Gavroche have hardly left each other’s side for a moment and Eponine is practically clinging to Combeferre’s hand.

Things are better once the actual meal starts—and Grantaire tries to tell himself that it has nothing to do with the glass of wine at his place setting (yes, the Combeferres are the type of people who have handcrafted turkey place settings at their Thanksgiving table), but he knows it does. And he knows he shouldn’t keep reaching for the bottle for refills because he’s supposed to be cutting back, but he used to be drinking enough to get drunk each day and really, three glasses of wine isn’t all that much in comparison.

The look Eponine gives him makes him slow down his pace a little. There are children around and he doesn’t want to make an ass of himself in front of Combeferre’s family anyway because he knows that’ll upset Eponine. Besides, right this very minute, Jehan is probably enduring hell with his dad at whatever-the-hell it is that he’s at without the assistance of alcohol or opiates, and if Jehan can suffer through that sober than he can certainly handle a perfectly amicable dinner with Combeferre’s family.

There are so many people in attendance and no one stays still long enough for Grantaire to get an accurate count of just how big Combeferre’s extended family is, but it means that they can’t all fit at the same table and almost every available space on the ground floor is occupied by tables and folding chairs. Grantaire feels uncomfortable at being at the table with Combeferre and his parents, as though the honor of eating with the hosts should go to someone else, but it does mean that he gets to watch Combeferre’s parents talk to Eponine and it’s obvious that both of them fall in love with her instantly. They skirt around the issue of her own family, which makes Grantaire thinks that Combeferre gave his parents a heads up about her home life, but they ask her about school and work and what she wants to do with her degree and not once do they act like the girl from the wrong side of the tracks isn’t good enough for their son.

They’re equally cordial to Grantaire, Azelma, and Gavroche—even when Gavroche breaks Eponine’s _do not swear in front of my boyfriend’s parents_ rule, they don’t even bat an eye. Grantaire is seated across from one of Combeferre’s many uncles and this one happens to be an art collector and Grantaire loses himself in conversation with the old man. He almost forgets about the strong inclination he still has to keep drinking.

Almost.

The conversation is stimulating enough, though, that at first he doesn’t feel his phone vibrating against his leg in his pocket. It’s Azelma—seated next to him and who, like most teenagers, possesses an over-developed sense of sound when it comes to the vibrations of phones—who notices the buzzing.

“Is that your phone?” she asks, nudging him a little with her elbow.

“What?” Now that she’s mentioned it, though, he can feel against his leg. He glances apologetically at Combeferre’s uncle and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He plans on just ignoring the call, but the caller ID makes him think differently. “Sorry,” he says to the uncle, “but I really should take this.”

On his other side, Eponine pulls away from her conversation and asks, “Who is it?”

“Jehan,” he says. The phone stops buzzing and the call gets added to the list of already missed calls. Almost at once, it starts vibrating in his hand again. _Shit_.

Concern flashes over her face.

“Down the hall and to the left,” Combeferre says, leaning around Eponine to speak to him, “is my dad’s study. You can take the call in there. You’ll have as much privacy as you need.”

Combeferre doesn’t actually say it, but Grantaire hears the implicit request for information once he has it, so he nods and excuses himself from the table.

Once he’s shut himself up in the study, he answers the phone. “Jehan?” he says. “What’s wrong? What do you need?”

He knows Jehan wouldn’t be calling him like this if something weren’t wrong and he worries because Enjolras and Courfeyrac promised to keep close to Jehan during the dinner and Courfeyrac in particular has already proven himself in being able to talk Jehan down when he’s upset, so the fact that Jehan is calling _him_ instead of accepting help or comfort or whatever from the two friends he has with him worries him.

It worries him a lot.

On the other end of the phone, Jehan is breathless. “I fucked up, R,” he says. “I seriously fucked up—shit, he’s going to kill me, R. I’ve never talked to him like that—especially not in public—and I’ve never seen him look that angry. Shit fuck this is bad, R, this is really really bad.”

He’s speaking so fast that Grantaire has a hard time keeping up with what he’s saying. “Jehan, I need you to slow down for me,” he says, trying to keep his own voice calm and steady even though he hates hearing Jehan like this and he hates it even more that he’s not around to help. “Can you start at the beginning? Can tell me what happened?”

“You should have heard the things he was saying, such awful awful things, and it’s one thing for him to talk about me that way—but shit, Grantaire, the things he said about Courf’s family, you should have seen how his dad looked and his sister actually ran away from the table—and I can’t believe he said that, but of course he did because it’s not like he’s ever cared about how other people feel and he just—ugh, I got so angry, R, normally I can handle it but his dad looked devastated and I told him he needed to apologize—I actually demanded that he do something—” Jehan’s breath hitches. “—and shit, R, I can’t—I shouldn’t have—”

“Jehan, can you take a deep breath for me?” he says. Even over the phone, he can discern enough of Jehan’s state-of-mind to know that he’s on the verge of hyperventilating. He’s able to pick out a few details—mostly that Jacques Prouvaire surprised absolutely no one by acting like a complete dick and said something insulting about Courfeyrac’s family—but there are a few details he still feels he needs.

He hears Jehan take a shaky breath, but it doesn’t sound like it does much to help.

“Are you still at the dinner?” Grantaire asks. “Where are Enjolras and Courfeyrac?”

“Where else would I be?” Jehan asks. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to go, it’s not like I’d dare go anywhere else, not with how angry he is, and shit, R, he told me that he expects me to go back home for the rest of the holiday, it’s three days before school starts again and I can’t spend all that time there alone, R, I can’t—I can’t—shit, I can barely breathe as it is and the idea of going back to that, to that mausoleum, it’s like being buried alive, and I can’t do it—and it’s stupid and pathetic because it’s not like he ever does anything more than shout at me, he’s not like your dad or Eponine’s dad, and I know you all think I’m stronger than this, but I’m not, I’m really not, I’m not stronger than him and I can’t do this, R, I can’t.”

Grantaire hears Jehan fumbling with something and then hears the familiar snick of a lighter. He figures Montparnasse probably made sure Jehan had at least one joint on him—probably hid one and the lighter in his suit coat pocket, just for this very reason—and he’s grateful. It sucks, of course, to listen to his friend try to numb crippling anxiety with a joint when there’s nothing he can do but talk over the phone, but he’s grateful that Jehan has it at least, because he’s never found a more effective way of helping Jehan calm down.

He hears Jehan exhale slowly and he leans back against the desk in the study.

“No one is going to make you go back there,” he says. “I know your dad still thinks he has you by the balls, but he doesn’t, okay? He doesn’t get to bully you around like this just because he thinks he can, and I know you don’t like upsetting him, but if it comes between him being upset and you being upset, I’m going to pick you over him. Every time. Now, if I have to drive there myself and pick you up and take you back to Parnasse’s apartment—to your real home—I will. You know I will.”

“Why am I such a fuck up?” Jehan says. He practically moans it, like now that the first wave of anxiety is starting to pass, he’s just been slammed with exhausted defeat.

“You’re not a fuck up,” he says. “You’ve never been a fuck up. Just because your dad is too much of an asshole to see otherwise doesn’t make it true.”

“This shouldn’t bother me like it does. Fuck it, this is pathetic. Look at me, I can’t even make it through a single fucking dinner with my dad without needing to step out to smoke a fucking joint because I can’t function otherwise. Shit, I shouldn’t smoking anyway! I promised, we promised—”

“It’s okay,” Grantaire says. “You did the best you could, Jehan, I believe that. I’m not upset because you needed something to take the edge off.”

“I’m such a fuck up,” he says. “I can’t believe—we said we weren’t going to anymore, but he just—”

“Jehan, seriously, it’s okay, I’m not upset.”

“I just got so upset—I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry—I can’t—Shit, I knew this would happen—He just got so angry and I couldn’t breathe and—”    

Grantaire hears something crack and the murmur of other voices.

“Jehan?” he asks. It sounds like he dropped the phone.

A moment later, he hears someone fumbling with the phone.

“This is Enjolras, can I ask who’s speaking?”

“About fucking time,” Grantaire snaps. Now that he’s not dealing with Jehan, he feels at liberty to let loose some of the anger that’s been building in his chest. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Grantaire?”

“Yes, this is fucking Grantaire. Are you and Courfeyrac both here now? Where’s Jehan? Put him back on the phone.”

“Yeah, Courf and I are both here,” Enjolras says like he’s not even bothered by Grantaire’s anger. “Courf is with him now—”

“Put him on the phone, Enjolras.”

“Courf is calming him down,” Enjolras says. “Once he’s calmed down a little, I’ll put him back on the phone, I swear. I know you’re worried about him. We are too, but I promise, Grantaire, Courf is taking good care of him right now.”

He sighs and closes his eyes. He can almost imagine that Enjolras is with him now, giving him all the reassurance he needs about Jehan. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“I understand,” Enjolras says. “Is there anything we should be doing for Jehan right now? Courf is just sort of hugging him, and Courf is usually pretty good at reading these sorts of things, but if that’s going to make it worse—”

Despite his worry for Jehan, Grantaire finds Enjolras’s babbling endearing. Hell, what _doesn’t_ he find endearing about Enjolras? “No, hugging is fine,” Grantaire says. “Just try not to raise your voice or boss him around or anything right now, okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” Enjolras says.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asks. “All I could make out is that his dad was acting like an asshole.”

“Asshole is putting it lightly,” Enjolras says. “The sort of poison he was spitting doesn’t bear repeating, but he was absolutely horrid to Jehan and then he actually had the nerve to insult the Courfeyracs on a rather personal family matter on top of it.”

“Jacques Prouvaire is rarely content unless he’s making everyone else around him feel like shit,” Grantaire says. “It’s his preferred _modus operandi_ , as it were.”

“I think it was what he said about the Courfeyracs that upset Jehan the most—not that I blame him. If I hadn’t heard it myself, I never would have believed that anyone would ever dare say something like that.”

“Yeah, well, Jehan’s always been one of those people who are far more concerned about other people than he is about himself,” he says. “Has Courfeyrac been able to calm him down at all?”

“He’s still shaking a little, but he’s not babbling anymore.”

“Good,” Grantaire says. “That’s a good sign. Look, he mentioned that his dad expects him to be returning home with him and his mom tonight, but you can’t let him go back there, okay? He might try to fight you on this one because his dad will try to bully him into it, but you can’t let him go back. That place is toxic. That man is toxic.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Enjolras says. “Courfeyrac has already offered to take him back into the city.”

“Take him back to my place if you do,” he says. “Parnasse probably has his friends over and I don’t want any of them saying anything that’ll upset him anymore at this point. If he wants Parnasse, he can come to my place, but Jehan needs someplace quiet to unwind.”

“Courf’s family actually doesn’t live too far from him,” Enjolras says. “It’s a pretty big house, and since Courf’s family is still here, it’ll be empty. Do you think it would help to bring him there?”

“Ask him,” Grantaire says. “He might not be comfortable going some place new, but he might welcome it. I’m not sure. Just don’t pressure him one way or the on it, okay?”

“Of course not. He’s looking a little steadier now. Do you want to talk to him?”

He sighs. “No,” he says slowly. “It sounds like you and Courfeyrac have everything under control. You can do more for him now than I can, anyway.”

“I’ll keep you posted on what we do, okay? I know you worry about him.”

He’s a little surprised at Enjolras’s thoughtfulness but he’s grateful for it all the same. “Thanks,” he says.

When he goes back to the dinner table, he’s welcomed with smiles from Combeferre’s relatives and a look of concern from Eponine and Combeferre. He gives Eponine the sparknotes version of what happened and she swears softly under her breath.

“Courfeyrac and Enjolras are taking care of him,” he says. “There’s not much else we can do at this point.”

Eponine nods. “We can check on them after dinner,” she says. “Ferre’s got both of them on speed dial.”

But they don’t need to call, because at the end of the meal when desserts start getting passed around the table, Grantaire’s phone buzzes again, this time with a picture message from an unknown number.

Enclosed is a picture of Jehan half-asleep on a couch with Courfeyrac sitting at his feet.

**Unknown Number:** _Hey, Grantaire. This is Enjolras. I don’t think you have my number, but I wanted to let you know that we got Jehan to Courf’s place without any fuss. We’re probably going to spend the night here. I’ll keep you posted if anything changes and don’t hesitate to call me if there’s anything we should know._

He passes the phone to Eponine, who shows the picture message to Combeferre before passing the phone back to him. As he adds Enjolras’s contact information to his phone, he finds himself suddenly grateful for the strange circumstances that lead these people into his and Jehan’s lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks so much for your continued support/comments/kudos. You're all lovely people and your feedback always brightens my day. I've said it before and I'll say it again--you guys are the best.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Friday :)


	36. Chapter Thirty-Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jehan copes with the aftermath of the holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be a good moment to get a quick refresher on the tags for this story. The tags are there for a reason, folks, so just keep that in mind.

Originally, Jehan thought that the best course of action would be to stay at Courferyac’s parents’ home until school started back up on Monday. Or maybe just stay there forever because the house was safe and warm and free from any sort of drama or strife and he could pass the time looking through old pictures of Courfeyrac, of which there are plenty—everything from little Courfeyrac on his first day of elementary school to high school Courfeyrac who seemed blessed not to ever experience any sort of awkward teenage phase (a fact made more obvious considering in most of Courfeyrac’s high school pictures, he’s accompanied by Marius, who did have a terribly unfortunate awkward phase, complete with braces, acne, and a stupid haircut).

But staying at Courfeyrac’s feels too much like running and hiding, so on Friday morning, Jehan makes Courfeyrac take him home. Enjolras suggests going to Grantaire’s apartment, but Jehan refuses to be taken anywhere other than his apartment.

It bothers him a little that both Enjolras and Courfeyrac concede to him because he can’t shake the feeling that they’re giving into him because they’re afraid of upsetting him and he doesn’t like the idea that they might perceive him as being weak.

Mont’s not home when he get in, which doesn’t surprise Jehan too much, because he imagines that his boyfriend probably spent his Thanksgiving getting high and drunk with his friends and he probably crashed at one of their apartments and is still sleeping everything off.

He’s not terribly bothered by this fact because while it would have been nice to have Mont home right now, all Jehan really wants is to get high himself to take some of the edge of his anxiety off. He can still feel it—the sense that he’s irrevocably offended his father and that something absolutely awful is going to happen and he can feel it under his skin, like an itch he can’t scratch. And he knows he promised Grantaire that they would stop with the self-medicating and the _let’s bury our problems in narcotics_ thing, but he already slipped up last night, and he doesn’t think that _not_ having another joint now is really going to solve anything.

He knows where Mont keeps his drugs and he’s not home for more than fifteen minutes before he’s rolled himself a joint and is smoking on their living room couch, feeling his anxiety slowly chip away.

Mont comes home later in the afternoon and when he sees Jehan with a joint in hand all he says is, “Shitty night?”

He doesn’t press for details when Jehan answers in the affirmative. He just flops down on the couch, pulls Jehan into his arms, and they spend the afternoon passing joints back and forth.

Jehan spends most of Friday and Saturday sprawled around the apartment smoking and drinking with Montparnasse and when he wakes up late on Sunday morning, he feels like shit. He feels groggy and his head is fuzzy and his limbs are heavy. Mont has already left for the day—he left a note on the counter in the kitchen, telling Jehan he wouldn’t be back till this evening—and Jehan tries to shake his hangover with a run out in the brisk November-almost-December air, which gives him a headache but does get rid of most of his lethargy.

When he’s in the shower after his run, he decides that he really should stop with the drinking and the smoking. It’s not healthy to be dependent on it and there have to be other ways to cope with his anxiety. He doesn’t know what they are, but he knows they have to exist. Maybe on Monday he can ask Courfeyrac or Combeferre or Joly. This feels like something Joly would be able to offer advice on.

He doesn’t want to lose himself in a haze of chemical reactions in his brain. He thinks that he shouldn’t be trying to numb his feelings. Maybe his experiences would be better channeled into words. Maybe with words, he could help someone in a similar situation, or at the very least help build bridges of empathy between him and other people, and that’s important, right?

So he recommits to his earlier pledge to give up on self-medication. The first time, he thought he could do it without any help or support network. He figured that since marijuana isn’t actually physically addicting that he could give it up without any sort of trouble, but he’s beginning to see that that’s not the case because he knows if his dad calls in the next few days, the urge to smoke something or drink something or take something is going to be overwhelming.

He’ll tell his friends that he’s trying to quit so they can support him and keep him accountable. He’ll tell Mont so that his boyfriend can move his stash somewhere where Jehan won’t be able to find it if he wants it.

He’ll fix this. He’ll move forward.

Mont doesn’t come home until hours later when Jehan is making dinner and Mont greets him with a kiss.

“Didn’t think I’d find you sober,” he says.

“I’ve got class tomorrow,” Jehan says. “Finals are coming up and I can’t really afford to be hung over in class tomorrow.”

“You won’t be hung over if you’re still high.”

“Can’t afford that either. Besides, I think I’m going to quit smoking.”

Mont gives him an odd sort of look. “What do you mean by that?”

Jehan shrugs. “Just that there are probably better ways of dealing with my emotional shit than getting high all the time. I told R a month ago that I’d stop self-medicating anyway because he wanted to start cutting back on his drinking.”

“You’re hardly getting high all the time. This was the first time you’ve really relaxed all month.”

“Still,” Jehan says. “I want to stop. I’m not sure I enjoy it anymore. I was kind of hoping that you wouldn’t mind either hiding your stash somewhere else or maybe moving it from the apartment. You know, to help cut back on temptation.”

“Temptation?” Montparnasse says. “Shit, Jehan, are your turning into some little Jesus freak? It’s just weed—it’s not like you’re a coke head.”

“I know,” Jehan says. He measures out some chicken stock and adds it to sauce he’s making in the skillet. “I just feel like I shouldn’t be smoking anymore and it’s illegal for me to be drinking for another two years almost anyway—and look at R, it’s not like self-medicating has ever helped him before. I guess I just think that maybe if I stop, I’ll be able to, I don’t know, cope with things better.”

“You couldn’t cope when you were sober Thursday night. Why do you think that’ll change now?”

He shrugs again. “I was planning on telling people I’m trying to give all that shit up, build myself a bit of a support network, you know? Maybe talking things over will be better than ignoring it.”

“Telling people like telling those weirdos you’ve started hanging out with?”

“They’re my friends, Mont,” Jehan says. “We’ve been over this before.”

“Sounds to me like you don’t think you’re good enough for these friends. They’ve got a problem with the fact that you smoke pot, don’t they?”

“It’s never really come up before,” Jehan says. “And I’m not quitting to impress them.”

“Oh yeah? Because I think you’re quitting because they’re trying to make you into someone you’re not. They’re trying to change you into some little naïve do-gooder. You never cared about politics and shit before them.”

Jehan gives him a look. “I’ve always cared about stuff like that, you just never bothered to listen. And I know you don’t like my friends—and news flash, I’m not terribly fond of yours either—but I’m perfectly capable of deciding what kind of people I want to be friends with, Mont. That really doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“It has nothing to do with me? They’re trying to make you into someone I don’t recognize, bird.”

“People change, Mont. The friends I’ve made really have nothing to do with that. I probably would have decided to quit smoking even if I’d never met them. And you have no room to criticize me because it’s not like you haven’t been acting different all month.”

“Shit, Jehan, that has nothing to do with you.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m the one who has to put up with you when you’re being moody and cold and cruel and I don’t like it. You’ve changed and you don’t talk to me about it, but whatever—I still love you and I’m still willing to ride this out with you.”

“That’s completely different.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. Shit, seriously, I’m dealing with a lot of crap that you can’t even begin to fathom—”

“I get that, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t changed. And that’s fine, Mont, people change and that doesn’t mean that I love you any less, but it’d be nice if you’d give me the same courtesy.”

“If you’re so gung-ho about change these days, how about this? You can change by growing a pair and learning to stand up to your asshole of a dad for a change instead of—”

“Don’t,” Jehan snaps. He’s tired and his emotions are frayed after a long day, a long week—hell, a long _month_ of dealing a rollercoaster of emotional drama. “Don’t bring him into this.”

“Let’s not pretend that your great daddy issues aren’t the source of any other perceived failings you might.”

“Fuck you,” Jehan says. “For the record—not that you seem to care right now—but I did stand up to my dad on Thursday and I haven’t felt like I’m on solid ground since.”

“If you really stood up to him, you’d be feeling fine. It’s about time you put that asshole in his place instead of letting him shove you around all the time.”

“You know what? If you can’t be supportive about this, you can keep your fucking opinions to yourself. Just because my dad pushes me around doesn’t mean I’m going to let my boyfriend do it too just because you don’t like the decisions I’m making.”

“Stop playing the victim, Jehan! I have every right to be pissed that my boyfriend is turning into some frumpy little boy scout—because that’s _not_ the person I fell in love with!”

“Would you stop snapping at me? Because I’ve had a really shitty weekend and the last thing I need right now is my boyfriend acting like a complete asshole when I—”

His words are cut off abruptly when the back of Mont’s hand collides with his face.

The blow is forceful enough that it knocks Jehan against the counter and he grips it for support because he all he’s aware of is how bad his cheek stings—it’s hot, like he’s been burned, and it’s sharp, like he’s been stabbed—and his legs process the shock by not wanting to support him any more so he just grabs onto the counter because right now it’s the only thing that feels stable.

“Shit,” Mont says. Almost instantly, his anger vanishes and he reaches out to Jehan, who flinches despite himself. “Shit, Jehan, bird, I didn’t mean to do that. You know that. You know I wouldn’t hurt you. Fuck, let me take a look at that.”

He takes Jehan’s chin gently in one hand and directs his face towards the light. Part of Jehan wants to pull away from the touch but the other part wants to lean into it because Montparnasse is rarely this gentle and hardly anyone sees this side of him.

He looks so contrite.

“I don’t think it’s going to bruise,” he says. “Shit, bird, you’ve got to forgive me. You just made me so angry, I couldn’t stop myself. You know I’d never hurt you, you know that.”

Jehan presses his hand against his cheek. The skin is warm under his hand. It’s still stinging.

He’s never realized before that Mont could hit that hard.

“Come on,” Mont says, gently pulling Jehan’s hand away. He coaxes him out of the kitchen. “Let’s get you to the couch. I can get you a cold washcloth, that’ll help. I just want you to relax, okay, bird? Just sit here and let me take care of you, all right? You know I normally wouldn’t do that, right? I was just angry—you’d made me angry, bird, you normally don’t do that—you’ll forgive me, right?”

Jehan sinks down onto the couch and Mont leaves him for a minute to get a wet washcloth and when he comes back, he caresses Jehan’s cheek with it.

“Dinner’s burning,” Jehan says.

Mont presses the washcloth into his hand. “I’ll take care of it. You just sit here. I don’t want you worrying about anything else tonight, okay?”

Jehan nods.

Mont putters around the kitchen for a few minutes, trying to salvage what he can of the dinner. Jehan sits and watches him, his mind slowly catching up with the most recent string of events. Mont hit him. Mont struck him hard enough that he was worried about bruising. Mont backhanded him so hard that he got knocked into the counter.

His stomach churns and part of him can’t believe it. It doesn’t…it doesn’t fit with what he knows of Montparnasse. This isn’t the man his boyfriend is. This isn’t…this isn’t right.

Mont returns a few minutes later with a plate of mostly unburnt food, which he sets gently on Jehan’s lap, like he’s afraid that anything more forceful will break him. Mont gets up to get Jehan something to drink but Jehan catches him by the wrist and pulls him back to the couch.

“Mont,” he says. “I need you to promise me that this isn’t going to happen again.”

“Of course it’s not,” Mont says. “You know I’d never hurt you. I swear, Jehan, this is never going to happen again.”

Jehan looks into his boyfriend’s eyes as he speaks. He’s sincere.

Jehan believes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all of your kudos/commenting/general supporting/good-vibe sending ways, everyone. You're seriously the best. I will punch anyone who begs to differ.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday.


	37. Chapter Thirty-Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire gets a text from Jehan early Monday morning.

Grantaire gets a text early on Monday from Jehan, who says that he’s not feeling well and is skipping classes and won’t be going to the meeting at the Musain today and would he please let the others know and tell them not to worry.

On campus an hour or so later, Grantaire runs into Combeferre, who asks if he’s heard from Jehan at all over the weekend because people are worried—Grantaire thinks that this is the most co-dependent group of friends he’s ever met if everyone already knows that Jehan had a rough Thanksgiving and are still worried about it—and Grantaire tells Combeferre that Jehan’s feeling a little poorly and Combeferre nods and says that he hopes Jehan feels better.

Within two hours after that, Grantaire has gotten texts from _everyone_ expressing concern about Jehan. Joly’s concerned that the seasonal flu is going around and if Jehan’s caught it, then he’ll be sick for the rest of the week and finals start in two weeks. And everyone from Bahorel to Musichetta texts him to find out if there’s anything they can do or anything Jehan might need right now.

He didn’t even know that all of them had his phone number.

(He does, unashamedly, use this as an excuse to start texting Enjolras. He had refrained from giving into that particular urge all weekend beyond forward a text that he got on Friday from Sandra about an attempted attack on another sex worker, but now he has a good excuse to start casually texting and once he starts, he doesn’t really feel the need to stop. It’s not like Enjolras can take his phone number back if Grantaire starts to annoy him. He really should have tried to get his phone number earlier.)

Courfeyrac tracks him down after his last class, and it’s actually a little frightening because he knows he’s never told Courfeyrac anything about his schedule. Courfeyrac provides him with a soup he bought from some little bistro and informs Grantaire in no uncertain terms that he’s to bring the soup to Jehan and then let him know if there’s anything else that Jehan needs.

“He’s just a little sick,” Grantaire says. “It’s not like he’s dying.”

Courfeyrac ignores him.

Grantaire figures that no one is going to get off his case if he doesn’t check up on Jehan, even though he knows full well that when he’s sick, Jehan prefers to be left alone with only the occasional unobtrusive check-up. He hopes that their friends haven’t been texting Jehan the way they’ve been harassing him all day because it’ll do nothing but make Jehan feel worse.

After he leaves campus, he heads straight to the apartment that Jehan and Montparnasse share and he knocks on the door.

Jehan calls through the door, “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” he says, knowing Jehan will recognize his voice.                                                      

“The door’s unlocked,” Jehan says. 

Grantaire lets himself in. “Are you sure that it’s safe to leave your door unlocked like that? I know Parnasse is—whoa, what the hell is Parnasse apologizing for?”

The apartment is stuffed bouquets of flowers and it looks like Montparnasse robbed a flower shop. Jehan’s crossed legged on the couch folding laundry. There are two vases of flowers on the table next to the couch.

Jehan shakes his head. “We got in a bit of an argument last night,” he says. “I guess he just feels bad about it—you know, on top of everything else that’s happened this week.”

“What kind of argument was it?” Grantaire asks. He knows Montparnasse doesn’t care much for flowers and he can’t think of what sort of fight they must have had in order for Montparnasse to do something like this.

“It’s nothing,” Jehan says, rubbing the side of his face a little. “I told him I wanted to cut back on the drugs and he got annoyed because he feels like our friends are changing me and it was just really stupid. All of it was stupid.”

Grantaire nods. He moves aside a vase of flowers so he can sit down. “Speaking of our friends, they’re all obscenely involved in everyone else’s life and once word got out that you weren’t feeling well, they practically mobbed me.” He holds out the brown paper bag with the soup container. “Courfeyrac wanted me to bring you some soup.”

Jehan smiles a little and accepts the bag. “That was thoughtful of him.”

“They’re all worried,” he says. “And not just about you being ill.”

He winces a little. “They heard about Thanksgiving, didn’t they?”

“They heard about Thanksgiving,” Grantaire confirms.

“Well, they don’t need to worry,” Jehan says. “I spent the weekend getting high—sorry about that, by the way, I know we promised that we wouldn’t—”

“It’s fine,” Grantaire says. “Seriously. You slipped up, it’s okay.”

“Anyway, I got high and I’m fine now, if not a little hung over. That’s probably why I’m not feeling well.”

Grantaire studies him for a long moment. Something feels…off. He’s not sure if it’s because of Thanksgiving or the fight he had or the hangover, but Jehan seems a little harder, a little sharper.

He’s not smiling.

“Are you sure that everything’s okay?” he asks.

“As okay as they ever are.” He looks up from the shirt he’s folding and sees Grantaire frowning a little. “Seriously, R, I’m okay.”

“You’d tell me if something more was going on, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would.” He sighs. “Honestly, Grantaire, I’m just tired and hung over. Give me a few hours to sort myself out and I’ll be fine.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to come to the meeting tonight? If you’re feeling up to it, it might help. It’s hard to feel down around that lot.”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t, I can’t guarantee that they’re not all going to come over here _en masse_ to check up on you. Joly in particular is very worried that you’re coming down with the flu.”

Jehan smiles a little. “Joly is a sweetheart,” he says. “I’ll try to come for a little bit, but I probably won’t stay very long. I’ve got a lot of papers I need to catch up on.”

Grantaire smiles at him. “With finals coming up, I’m sure Enjolras is going to keep things short. Combeferre told me over the holiday that Enjolras usually starts studying for finals a month in advance.”

Jehan smiles a little. “Enjolras would. I’ll try to make it tonight, but I can’t make any promises.”

“Of course not,” Grantaire says. “Do you want me to stick around for a bit? I can help you fold laundry or whatever, just keep you company.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be fine. Mont should be home soon anyway.”

“You sure? I don’t mind. It’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to be.”

Jehan reaches over and squeezes his hand. “It’s fine,” he says. “I promise. I’ll keep you posted about whether or not I’m coming to the meeting tonight.”

“If you’re not feeling up to it, don’t stress yourself,” Grantaire says. “Being around that lot when you’re hung over probably sucks.”

“Probably does,” Jehan says with a shadow of a smile. “They’re kind of loud. Thanks for dropping by, though, and I’ll text Courf to thank him for the soup so he’ll stop harassing you.”

“I’d appreciate it.” He gets up and lets himself out, casting on last look at Jehan before he closes the door behind him and tries to shake the feeling that something’s wrong.

* * *

 

Grantaire shows up at the Musain early because Eponine sent him an emergency text. Apparently the first custody hearing for her siblings was moved to this morning, which no one bothered to tell her, and while her parents have been denied custody of her siblings, now Gavroche and Azelma have both been placed in temporary foster care until the court can decide on a legal guardian. When he arrives at the Musain, Eponine is seated with Enjolras and Feuilly, and Grantaire can see in Eponine’s eyes that she’s prepared to fight to the death to take in her younger brother and sister. When he sits down, Feuilly is giving her an insider’s perspective on the foster care system

“They’re probably in a group home right now,” Feuilly says. “Unless there was a foster family in the area who had some open space—but considering how close it is to Christmas, that’s doubtful.”

Eponine glances between Feuilly and Enjolras. “Why is that doubtful?”

“Taking in two extra kids right before the holidays,” Feuilly says, “it’s kind of hard. Not many families are going to want to buy two extra sets of presents for kids who might not even be there that long. A lot of foster families aren’t going to want the added expenses right before the holidays.”

“What kind of people are these?” Enjolras says, sounding a little affronted, which makes Grantaire smirk a little.

“Most of them are good people,” Feuilly says. “I know we all hear the horror stories about foster care, but I was in the system for over ten years and I met a lot of wonderful people. The good news about all of this is that if your brother and sister are in a group home, it should be really easy for you to get temporary custody, Eponine, especially this close to the holidays.”

“Are you serious?” she asks.

Feuilly nods. “Group homes can get really crowded really quick, and they try to get kids out of them as soon as they can. You’ll need to get in touch with their social worker, and they’ll want to inspect your apartment and ask you annoying questions about job stability, but I think odds are in your favor to get temporary custody before Christmas.”

Eponine looks like she might kiss Feuilly for giving her this good news, but instead she launches into a half-dozen other questions about foster care and group homes and what she needs to do to at least appear to be a competent guardian.

As they talk, Enjolras shifts his chair a little closer to Grantaire’s. “How’s Jehan doing?” he asks. “Courf mentioned that he gave you some soup to drop off.”

“He’s doing fine,” Grantaire says. “He’s not so much sick as he is a little hung over. If he’s feeling up to it, he said he’d try to stop by tonight.”

“Hung over? Was he drinking?”

“Smoking,” Grantaire says. He watches Enjolras’s face, remembering the fights they’ve gotten into before about self-medication and recreational drug use. He’s not going sit by and let someone pass judgment on Jehan, but Enjolras just nods.

“Is there anything the rest of us can be doing to help him?” Enjolras asks. “I know Courf usually keeps up with things like that, but I’d like to know to know if there’s anything I can be doing.”

“He’s trying to cut back on the smoking,” Grantaire says. “Maybe just some extra emotional support? I don’t know. Pot has always been a sort of emotional crutch for him, so he’ll probably need a shoulder or two to lean on if something goes wrong.”

“He’s cutting back? That’s great,” Enjolras says.

He wonders if Enjolras would say the same thing if he knew Grantaire was cutting back on the alcohol. This week he’s supposed to be down to two drinks a day and already it feels like it’s killing him. His body and his mind ache for it and he’s surprised that he hasn’t snapped at the myriad of people texting him today about Jehan, because he doesn’t want to deal with their concern when he’s trying to keep his mind off the fact that he’d give up one of his hands for another couple of beers.

He wants to think Enjolras would be proud of him, but part of him doubts it. He’s done little in his life to make anyone proud. And on most days, he sincerely doubts his ability to sober up, so it’s best not to tell his friends that he’s cutting back. It’s better that they don’t know so that they’re not disappointed in him when he slips up.

Because he will slip up eventually. He always does.

The rest of the group filters in in clusters of twos and threes and they don’t have a very formal meeting today. Mostly they just sit around and swap Thanksgiving stories and occasionally someone will bring up the charity fundraiser that they’re hosting at the end of finals week—which usually generates stable conversation for about three minutes before someone says something that dissolves the conversation into jokes and laughter.

Jehan arrives nearly an hour after everyone else and he looks tired but he smiles when the others call his name to welcome him. Grantaire scoots his chair away from Eponine’s and pulls up a chair between them for Jehan to sit.

Jehan’s quiet as everyone talks around him and Courf keeps shooting him concerned looks, but Grantaire’s not too worried. Even if Jehan weren’t hung over, sometimes he’s just quiet. Sometimes he prefers to listen and observe than talk and participate. Grantaire used to worry about it when they first met. He knew that for himself, getting quiet like that was a bad sign. It meant something was riding him and he’d probably seek solace in booze or drugs or sharp pain caused by razor blades, and he used to worry what Jehan would do when he got quiet like this. Turns out that Jehan just gets quiet sometimes, like the energy he needs to be social just isn’t there. Courfeyrac might be worried, but Grantaire knows that Jehan will sort himself out within a day or two.

Now that everyone is here, Enjolras makes another valiant effort at corralling them all into getting work done. He brings up the text message Grantaire had gotten over the weekend from Sandra—another sex worker had been attacked, though she had been armed with pepper spray and managed to get away with nothing more than a few bruises and a sprained wrist. Sandra had told Grantaire that she was ultimately fine, though very badly shaken, and Grantaire reported the information back to Enjolras because he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about it otherwise.

“Luckily,” Enjolras says as he finishes relaying the details of the attack, “she made it away without any lasting damage, but she’s afraid to go back to work. No one should have to live with that kind of fear.”

“This is what—the sixth victim?” Bahorel says.

“Survivor,” Enjolras says, almost automatically. Grantaire supposes he must have forgotten about the two “survivors” who didn’t actually _survive_. “And this is the seventh, actually, I think.”

“Surely at least one of them must have seen who attacked them,” Bahorel says. “I mean, this one pepper sprayed the bastard. Can’t we get some sort of description of who’s doing this?”

“Why?” Eponine asks. “So we can go after them ourselves? We’re not cops, Bahorel, and this isn’t some sort of crime show. When civilians get involved in investigations like this, the civilians tend to end up dead.”

“There’s no investigation at all,” Bahorel says.

But Enjolras shakes his head. “Eponine is right.” He drags his hand through his hair, making the blond curls stick out at odd angles. It takes more effort than Grantaire cares to admit not to reach out and smooth the curls back down. “This isn’t something we can handle on our own. It’s too dangerous. But I’m really at a loss—Grantaire and I have talked to some of these women, and none of us can think of anything to do to help the situation as it currently is.”

“We could host an awareness run,” Jehan says off-handedly. He’s cradling a chai latte in his hands and he’s leaning back in his chair, as though he wishes he were a little apart from the rest of the group instead of in it. When everyone turns to look at him, he doesn’t blush, but he does duck his head.

“An awareness run?” Feuilly asks.

“You know,” Jehan says, “like a 5K against domestic violence or something. I used to run cross country in high school and during the off-season I’d do awareness runs all the time to keep in shape. Marathons for cancer awareness, or 10Ks for to raise awareness about autism. They always have really catchy names. I did one a few years back to raise awareness about lung cancer, and they had each of the runners wear a sign with different statistics about lung cancer—death rates, the lack of early detection tests, that sort of thing. We could market it as a run against domestic violence and include stats about the sort of violence and discrimination sex workers face.”

“Jehan,” Enjolras says. “That’s brilliant.”

Next to him, Combeferre nods. “That certainly gets the word out better than anything else we’ve discussed.”

“I know it’s lousy timing,” Enjolras says, “because I’m sure you’ve got papers to work on and we all have finals coming up, but do you think you could head this up, Jehan? We’ll all help however you need us to, of course, but do you think you could take point?”

For a second, it looks like Jehan’s about to refuse and Grantaire can hardly blame him—the past month hasn’t exactly been easy for Jehan and if he and Mont were arguing just like, then it’s possible that this coming month won’t be easy for Jehan either—but then Jehan tucks some loose hairs behind his ear and says, “Uhm, yeah. I think I can do that.”

The responding smile that Enjolras gives Jehan is dazzling, and Grantaire, a little disgusted with himself for feeling this way at all, is a little jealous that Jehan is the recipient of that smile and not him. He entertains the idea of offering to help Jehan organize this, thinking that maybe that’ll be enough to win scraps of affection from Enjolras, but he abandons the idea as soon as he has it. He doesn’t know shit about organizing runs or anything like that, and he’d probably just ruin it all even if he did try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends. I'm afraid that I may have emotionally scarred some of you (judging from the vast amount of swearing and caps locks in the comments haha) with the last chapter, so I'm here to offer virtual cuddles and chocolate and reassurances. I believe in happy endings! But seriously, I love you all and I loved all the outraged responses I got for last chapter (since, you know, outrage was the emotion I was hoping to incite--so I consider your caps lock and swearing a compliment on a job well done haha). Thank you so much for all your support :) You're all the best!
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Friday :)


	38. Chapter Thirty-Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A study session at Eponine and Grantaire's apartment gets derailed by Mont's appearance.

While it was definitely Enjolras’s idea to organize open group study sessions (which Courfeyrac calls “homework parties”) as the semester winds down and finals approach, Jehan is relatively certain that it was Combeferre’s idea to have these study sessions at Eponine’s apartment. The homework parties are always “come when you can” sorts of events, even though Enjolras has scheduled them for at least five nights out of seven every week until finals, and on Friday, the turn-out is small. Combeferre and Eponine cuddle-study on the couch and Enjolras has semi-permanently hijacked the kitchen table, where he has all his books and notes spread out. Jehan sits on the floor with his laptop on the coffee table and a stack of literature anthologies and annotated critical essays on the floor beside him. He’s grateful that the homework party is small tonight because he has a ton to do and not much time to do it and he really can’t afford any distractions at this point.

It doesn’t help that Mont keeps texting him—a steady stream of messages that indicate to Jehan that his boyfriend is bored and in search of attention despite the fact that Jehan keeps insisting that he really needs to work on this paper. It’s worth a full third of his grade in his American Literary History course.

The paper has been slow-going but he thinks he’s finally settled on a topic—existential subversion in Flannery O’Connor’s short stories.

“Do you think,” he says slowly, looking up from the paragraph he’s been working on for the last hour, “that The Misfit from ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ is an embodiment of existentialism?”

Enjolras, Combeferre, and Eponine all just stare at him.

“No one?” he says. “ ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’? Flannery O’Connor? Really, no one?” Damn. Combeferre is well-read and Enjolras loves philosophy. He’d been hoping that perhaps one of them would be able to offer an opinion, but he supposes this is what happens when you have study parties without any other arts or humanities majors. Grantaire could have talked this over with him. He sighs. “Where’s R when you need him?” he asks to no one in particular.

“Where is Grantaire anyway?” Enjolras asks.

Jehan’s phone buzzes before he can answer. Another text from Mont.

_Any idea when you’re going to be done, babe?_

He types out his answer ( _I’ve barely got a page and a half of a six page paper_ ) and says, “R stayed late on campus to finish a painting in one of the art studios in the fine arts building. He’s supposed to have a portfolio done by the end of the semester.”

“Hmm,” Enjolras says, flipping through a book he has open next to him. “It would have been nice to have him here. I’d like to see more of his art.”

Jehan looks up from his phone (Mont’s replies come quickly. This one: _maybe if you took a break, you could write faster_.) Eponine and Combeferre are staring at Enjolras too.

“What?” Enjolras says defensively.

Eponine smirks and turns back to her laptop and Combeferre shakes his head a little. Jehan looks at Enjolras thoughtfully—Enjolras and Grantaire have been arguing far less recently and perhaps that’s a sign of changing attitudes. “If you ask him,” he says, “he might show you some of his paintings. I know he’s got a few in an indie art gallery not far from campus.”

“Does he really?”

He nods. “He’s getting some good money from it, if I remember correctly.”

He turns his attention back to his phone and types out a message.  _I can’t afford to take a break right now, Mont. I’ll let you know when I’m done._

His phone goes off almost immediately, disrupting the relative silence of the apartment.

 **_Mont_ ** _: you’ve been working on this shit all day. Are u avoiding me?_

“Who keeps texting you, Jehan?” Combeferre asks.

“It’s just Mont,” he says.

 **_Jehan:_ ** _I’m not avoiding you. I just need some quiet to get this paper done. It’s worth a lot of my grade_

“What’s he up to?” Eponine asks. Her voice is a little sharp, and Jehan knows that she’s still bothered by that whole mess with Gueulemer from before Thanksgiving. Eponine doesn’t let go of grudges very easily.

“He doesn’t have anything going on tonight,” he says. “I think he’s just kind of bored. I haven’t been able to spend much time with him because I’ve been working on these papers.”

“Tell him to get over it,” she says. “He’s a big boy. Surely he can entertain himself for a few hours so you can get your homework done.”

His phone buzzes as soon as he’s set is down on the table.

 **_Mont:_ ** _I thought u were studying with other people. If you can study with them around, you can study with me around_

“It’s not a big deal,” he says to Eponine. “And I feel bad for neglecting him anyway. He’s been really attentive since Thanksgiving and I feel like I’m just sort of snubbing him.” **_Jehan:_** _I’m with a couple other students who are also doing homework. They’re not a distraction the way you would be_.  “The buzzing isn’t bothering you guys, is it? I can put my phone on silent.”

“It’s fine,” Eponine says. “Tell Parnasse for me to stop being so clingy.”

Jehan smiles a little. “Tell him yourself.”

When his phone doesn’t immediately buzz with a responding text, he puts it back on the table. Maybe Mont finally realized he’s serious when he says that he can’t afford any distractions right now. And while Mont is normally a very welcome distraction, Jehan just can’t deal with him right now. Mont’s been…he doesn’t want to say Mont’s been overbearing since their argument over the weekend, but that’s the only word that comes to mind. It’s not always overbearing in a bad sense—he wasn’t lying to Eponine when he said that Mont has been very attentive this whole week—but he’s hardly had any time to himself without Mont texting him every couple of minutes and he’s making it difficult to get anything done. He knows this is something that they really need to talk about, but he’s been reluctant to trouble the waters between them.

It’s not as though he’s afraid Mont will turn violent again—he believes his boyfriend’s promise that that isn’t going to happen again—but he knows Mont still feels guilty about slapping him, and Jehan doesn’t want to make Mont’s guilt worse by unnecessarily bringing up petty problems between them. It’s not like he’s ever liked confrontation anyway.

Minutes pass by without Mont texting him, and Jehan can finally get a good flow going on his paper. _The existential themes of the story are most clearly defined by The Misfit. Existentialism was a reaction to the horrors faced in World War I, and existential writings build on themes of the isolation of mankind, the lack of moral absolutes, and man’s futile search for a connection with the divine. O’Connor’s Misfit, like many men of the age, faces the world with existential beliefs. When confronting the grandmother, The Misfit claims, “If [Jesus] did what He said what he did, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you have got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meannesss to him. No pleasure but meanness."_

He's making a note to himself to add the citation he needs when someone knocks on the door and Eponine hollers, “It’s open!” without even bothering to ask who is at the door. It’s probably Joly or Courfeyrac, both of whom said they’d swing by once they finished working on various group projects and review sessions on campus. Jehan glances over his shoulder to see who’s joined them and sees Mont, who’s kicking off his shoes as though he’s perfectly comfortable here.

“Mont,” Jehan says, twisting around to get a better look. He can’t help but frowning a little because he’s almost entirely certain that he didn’t tell Mont _where_ he was studying, so he doesn’t know how Mont found him here. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d come by and see you,” he says. “Figured you could use a break by now.”

“Still can’t afford to take a break,” Jehan says. “This paper is due the day after tomorrow and I’m barely a third of the way done with it.”

Mont settles himself on the floor next to Jehan and presses a kiss to his lips—a kiss which feels a little too deep and a little too long considering they have an audience and Mont’s hand drops from his back to his ass, leaving Jehan no misunderstanding of what Mont was hoping for by stopping by. And while Jehan normally isn’t one to turn down sex, he really doesn’t have the time. Besides, Mont’s clothes carry the lingering smell of cigarette smoke and when he speaks, Jehan can smell the alcohol on his breath—neither of which are much of a turn on.

“You can’t be too worried about that paper with this party here,” Mont says.

Eponine rolls her eyes. “It’s a study party, Parnasse,” she says. “And if you’re going to make a nuisance of yourself, you can get out.”

“No need to get huffy, Ponine,” he says. “I can behave myself as well as the rest of these boy scouts here.”

Jehan’s well aware that both Combeferre and Enjolras are scowling at Montparnasse. “Mont,” he chides softly.

Mont smirks at him and leans in to nip at his earlobe—yet another indication of his intentions. “You let me know when you want to take that break, bird,” he says before pulling out his phone to occupy himself while Jehan works.

Jehan turns his attention back to his laptop and re-reads the last paragraph to get his mind back on track. Existentialism. The Misfit. He makes another note to come up with a solid concluding sentence and then moves onto his paragraph on the Grandmother. With Mont beside him, occupied by something on his phone, Jehan falls into another good paper-writing rhythm. _While the grandmother professes to be a Christian, thereby believing in moral absolutes and a connection with the divine, her shallow and hypocritical words suggest that her beliefs are as existential as The Misfit’s. The grandmother is defined by her self-absorption, which isolates her from mankind. The grandmother is incapable of acting without thinking of herself. She takes the family cat with them on vacation because she fears “the cat would miss her too much.". Similarly after the family crashes the car, she is more worried about her son being angry with her than she is about anyone else in the family—including her daughter-in-law and infant grandchild who had been thrown from the car (citation needed).  The grandmother’s obsession with herself is demonstrative of isolation from the rest of mankind._  

He grabs one of critical essays he read for research, trying to find a specific quote on why the Grandmother’s brand of existentialism is more profound than The Misfit’s, but Mont is fidgeting restlessly beside him. He raises his eyebrows when Mont catches him staring in a silent question.

Mont just huffs and turns his attention to Eponine. “You got anything to eat around here, Ponine?” he asks.

“You know where the kitchen is,” she says.

Mont rolls his eyes at her. He nudges Jehan with his knee. “You hungry?”

Jehan shrugs because he hasn’t really thought of food one way or the other today because he’s trying to get this paper done.

“Let me put it this way,” Mont says. “Have you eaten today?”

Jehan actually has to think about that before he can answer. “I think I had a bagel on campus. Maybe.”

Mont flashes a half-smile that usually makes Jehan’s knees go weak. It’s the sort of expression that usually gets Jehan to do anything Mont wants. “You should go fix something up for us.”

He frowns. “I’m not any less busy than I was a half hour ago.”

“I still think you need a break,” he says. “And I know you need to eat. You’ve barely eaten a thing this whole week.”

“That’s because I’ve been stressed out trying to get these papers done before they’re due.”

“All the more reason for you to eat now.”

“If it’s that big of a deal,” Jehan says, feeling his temper slip a little because why the hell won’t Mont let this drop, “then you can go into the kitchen and make something yourself.”

“Oh, c’mon, babe,” Mont says. He leans in close as he speaks and Jehan can get another whiff of the alcohol on his breath. “You know I’m no good in the kitchen.”

“Then order a fucking pizza.”

And that, for some reason, pisses Mont off. The look he gives him is ice. “What did you say?”

“You can order a pizza, Mont.” He drops his voice, trying valiantly to keep this a private conversation, even though he knows that Enjolras, Combeferre, and Eponine must be listening. “But I’m busy. I don’t have time for this right now. That’s why I came over here to work instead of staying home.”

“You don’t have time for this?” Mont says. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Jehan can’t help but feel that this conversation feels too much like slipping on ice. He can’t keep track of Mont’s rapidly changing moods.

“Oh, for crying out loud, Parnasse,” Eponine snaps. Jehan feels his face flush because now he can’t pretend that she wasn’t listening to them. “He’s working on his fucking paper. Finals are in less than two weeks. Give him some fucking breathing room, okay? And if you can’t handle this like a grown up, then you can get your ass out of my apartment.”

Mont turns to look at Eponine, his expression cold—and eerily similar to how he looked the night he hit Jehan. Combeferre sets aside his laptop, clearly ready to come to Eponine’s defense if she should need it, but Jehan feels the need to stop this and to stop it now.

“You know what?” he says irritably, getting to his feet. “Just stop. If it’s that big of a deal, I’ll go make you an effing sandwich.”

Mont smiles up at him, as though his fit of temper were nothing, and he swats at Jehan’s ass as he walks by. Normally Jehan would appreciate that kind of flirtatious behavior, but now it just irritates him more. “Thanks, babe,” Mont says. “I love you.”

Jehan resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Yeah. Love you too.”

“Get me a beer while you’re in there,” Mont calls after him. “I’m sure Grantaire keeps this place well-stocked. You should get one for yourself too.”

Once in the kitchen, Jehan takes some of his frustration out by opening and slamming shut cupboard doors as he tries to find everything he needs to make the stupid sandwich. Even with the noise he’s making, he can still hear Eponine from the next room.

“Listen here,” she says. Her voice is low, obviously in an attempt to keep Jehan from hearing but it’s a wasted effort. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on between the two of you, but you do not talk  to him like that—and you sure as hell don’t treat him like that in my home. If you’re going to act like an insufferable little shit, then you can get out.”

“Fuck, Ponine—”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.

“All right, all right. Keep your fucking hair on. I’ll behave, okay? I don’t suppose the boy scouts here have anything to add?”

“No,” Combeferre says. “I think Eponine covered it all quite well.”

“Then it’s settled,” Mont says.

Jehan hastily assembles a sandwich and when he’s putting away the cold cuts, he peers into the fridge, looking for beer. Not that he wants to give Mont anything else to drink at the point, because while his boyfriend isn’t drunk, he’s clearly had enough to drink that his inhibitions are down. There’s a lone bottle in the fridge next to a nearly-expired gallon of milk. He hesitates because he feels it would be rude to take the last bottle, but Grantaire probably has more in the closet-turned-pantry and he doesn’t want to risk provoking Mont’s temper again, so he grabs it before kicking the refrigerator door closed.

He takes a few calming breaths before leaving the kitchen, but before he can return to Mont, Enjolras calls to him.

“Hey, Jehan,” he says, “could I get you to look over this paragraph for me? Something feels weird about it and you’re better with words on paper than I am.”

“Okay,” he says, frowning a little because he really doesn’t think he’s any better with words than Enjolras is, regardless of the medium.

Enjolras pulls up a word document on his laptop, but there’s only one sentence written on the page. _Is everything okay with you and Montparnasse?_

He feels a flood of affection for his friend and he’s touched by Enjolras’s thoughtfulness. “It’s good,” he says, trying to answer Enjolras’s question without being obvious about it. He know Mont will be pissed if he thinks the rest of them are gossiping about him. “Everything looks good to me.”

“What if I change it like this?” Enjolras asks. He types out a new sentence. _If things aren’t all right, please don’t hesitate to tell us. Combeferre and I have absolutely no qualms with kicking him out if he’s a problem._

“No, no,” Jehan says. The last thing he wants is to kick Mont out. That’ll only make his temper worse. “The first one was better. It looks great.”

Enjolras looks at him for a long moment, as though trying to suss out some falsehood. Jehan hopes that his expression doesn’t betray him. “Okay,” Enjolras says. “Thanks for taking a look for me.”

He offers Enjolras a slim smile. “It’s no problem.”

Jehan returns to Mont and his spot at the coffee table, clearing off a little space for the plate and the beer bottle. Mont thanks him with a rough kiss that tastes like cheap beer and cigarettes and pulls him so close that he’s practically in Mont’s lap. Another day, another time, this sort of possessiveness wouldn’t bother him—Mont has always had a bit of a possessive streak—but as everything is now, he finds it unsettling.

He takes a deep breath to steady himself and turns his attention back to his paper. The sooner he gets the damn thing done, the sooner he and Mont can leave and talk out whatever mood has come upon him.

But it seems the fates are conspiring against him and his ability to finish this paper, because a moment later, Grantaire arrives. His clothes are paint-stained and there’s a smudge of red across his face.

He slams the door shut behind him.

“Well, good evening to you too, sunshine,” Eponine says.

Grantaire gives her an annoyed look before his eyes settle on Montparnasse. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Jehan groans because Grantaire is clearly in a foul mood and with the state Mont’s been in all night—well, nothing good is going to come of this.

“I came to make sure this one is taking care of himself,” Mont says. He pushes his half-eaten sandwich towards Jehan as though encouraging him to eat.

“Whatever,” Grantaire says.

“How’s the painting looking?” Jehan asks, hopefully trying to steer the conversation back onto safer ground.

“Like a fucking disaster,” he says. “Thanks for asking.”

Jehan winces.

“There’s no need for you to take your frustration out on him,” Enjolras says from the kitchen table. “He was just asking.”

“And it’s none of his business,” Grantaire snaps. “None of your business, either. Fuck it all, I need a drink.”

“Yeah, because that’ll solve your problems,” Enjolras mutters under his breath.

Grantaire gives him a slashing look before disappearing in the kitchen. Jehan hears the refrigerator door slam shut before Grantaire comes back into the living room. “Who the hell took my last beer?” he demands.

Jehan feels his stomach twist. He shouldn’t have taken the beer for Mont.

“You didn’t tell me this was his last one, babe,” Mont says, which does absolutely nothing to make Jehan feel better.

“I just thought you’d have more in the pantry or something,” he says quietly.

“Damn it, Jehan!”

“I’m sorry,” he says. He doesn’t have the emotional reserve to deal with Grantaire’s temper—no doubt the result of his efforts to curb his drinking—right now and he can feel his chest growing tight like there’s not enough space in his lungs for air. “I didn’t—”

Grantaire sighs. “No. It’s fine. I shouldn’t have snapped at you, and as Enjolras so thoughtfully pointed out, I shouldn’t be drinking anyway.” His voice drips with self-deprecation and Jehan’s first instinct is to try to soothe it away, but as he’s battling with his own anxiety, he can’t find the words to smooth Grantaire’s sharp edges.

“That’s not what I—” Enjolras starts, but Grantaire cuts him off.

“I’ve had a shit day and I’ve got paint in my hair. I’m going to take a fucking shower.” He storms to the back of the apartment, doors slamming in his wake.

“When are you going to give it a rest about his drinking problem?” Eponine snaps at Enjolras. She’s the only besides Jehan who knows Grantaire is trying to cut back.

“When is he going to admit that that stuff is going to kill him?” Enjolras retorts.

“Can we not do this right now?” Jehan asks. He hates the contention in the room. “I really do need to get this paper done.”

“You heard him,” Mont says. For the first time tonight, Jehan’s grateful for his presence. “He needs to get his damn paper done, so calm the fuck down.”

Mont rubs gentle circles against his back and Jehan feels the anxiety in his chest abate a little. He’s able to turn his attention back to his paper and Mont’s presence beside him is more comforting and supportive than possessive and overbearing. The atmosphere between them all is still tense and Jehan doubts that any of them gets any more work done than he does, although he does manage to churn out another paragraph by the time Grantaire gets out of the shower and joins them again in the living room. His hair is sopping wet, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. He just grabs an art history book and flops down onto the armchair to study it.

The room is silent when Mont leans in. He nuzzles Jehan, his nose nudging at Jehan’s ear, and he leans around Jehan to close his lit book and set it aside.

“C’mon, bird,” Mont whispers against his ear. “Let’s take a break.”

“I need you to let me finish this paper,” he says, grabbing his laptop when Mont tries to push it away.

Mont presses kisses against his neck. “C’mon. You’re all wound up. I’ll get you all nice and relaxed and you’ll be able to get this paper done in no time. Fifteen minutes is all you need.”

“You mean that’s all you need,” he says. He refuses to look up from his laptop to confirm the suspicion that everyone else is watching them.

Mont’s answer is to trail kisses along his jaw. “I’m going to make you feel so good.”

“Not now, Mont.”

“Oh, come on, bird,” he says. He slides one hand between Jehan’s thighs. “Don’t be like that.”

Jehan tenses and shoves Mont’s hand away. “Will you stop?” he hisses.

When Mont pulls back, his expression is cold. “Is this about what happened over the weekend?” he asks in a low voice.

The question is so unexpected that Jehan actually jerks back. “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Are you trying to punish me for that?”

It makes him sick to even think that Mont would assume he’s punishing him for that “Of course not,” he says. He glances around and he blushes when he notices that Eponine, Combeferre, and Enjolras are all watching him. Grantaire hasn’t looked up from his art history book, but he’s glowering at it like it’s caused him a personal offense. “Can we talk about this later? You’re making a scene.”

“Wouldn't be making a scene if you’d just play nicely,” Mont purrs. His hand is back between Jehan’s legs and he palms Jehan through his jeans, which sends heat and embarrassment thought Jehan’s body. He can feel his face flushing again as he shoves away Mont’s hand.

“Just stop it, Mont,” he says, irritation creeping into his voice. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Only because you won’t let me put you in the mood,” he says. He nips at Jehan’s ear, trying all the tricks that normally get Jehan to melt against him. “I’m trying to help you relax, bird.”

“Mont, seriously—”

“Fifteen minutes,” he says. “That’s all—”

“Fuck it all, Parnasse” Grantaire snaps, throwing his book aside. “He doesn’t want to fuck you right now—or be fucked by you—or do whatever kinky shit you two do together, okay? So back the hell off.”

“I’m sorry,” Mont sneers and Jehan tries not to groan because Mont is impossible when he uses that tone. “When exactly did this become any of your business?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Grantaire says. “Somewhere between you kissing him and trying to grope him in my living room.”

“Why were you watching? This isn’t a fucking peep show!”

“Mont,” Jehan says in warning.

“If it’s that big of a deal,” Grantaire says, “you know where the bathroom is. I’m pretty sure you and your hand can take care of your… _little_ problem there.”

Jehan groans and beside him, Mont practically growls. “What did you just say to me?”

“You heard—”

Jehan slams his laptop shut, cutting Grantaire off because he’s sure as hell not about to let his best friend and his boyfriend getting into a freaking pissing contest over this. “That’s enough,” he says. “We’re going.”

“What?” Mont says.

“If you and Grantaire are going to act like a pair of middle schoolers, then we’ll just go,” he says, shoving his laptop into its case. He crams his anthologies back into his bag and gets to his feet. “Come on,” he says, giving Mont a no-nonsense sort of look. “I’ve still got to get this paper done, and I’m obviously not going to get anything done here with you acting like this.”

“You don’t have to go, Jehan,” Eponine says. “You can stay here and work if you need to. Montparnasse can clear out on his own.”

“No,” he says, shrugging into his coat and pulling on his boots. “It’s fine. We’ll just do it his way.”

He walks to the door and pulls it open, standing beside it as Mont pulls on his shoes and sees himself out. He doesn’t miss the cold look Mont gives him, but he pretends it doesn’t make his stomach churn. He gives his friends a flickering smile before he slams the door shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seriously had to re-write this chapter about a half-dozen times and I'm still not 100% with it, so I apologize for any errors or inconsistencies or just badness that I might have unintentionally made myself blind after reading this over and over again. Also, sorry for the little bits of literature papers in there if that's not your thing (but really, it was fun to brush off some of my old literary analysis skills haha), and if you're into that sort of thing, go read "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor because it's beautiful. Actually, read anything by O'Connor. It's good stuff :) 
> 
> As always, thank you all so much for reading and for your continued support and enthusiasm. You all rock. (And seriously, last chapter tipped us over the 200 comment mark and the 300 kudos mark. I'm seriously swooning, friends.)
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday.


	39. Chapter Thirty-Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the study session debacle between Jehan and Mont.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for graphic violence.
> 
> Also, I just want to offer a general sort of content warning for upcoming chapters. We're entering the "dark night of the soul" of this fic and a lot of it has to deal with abuse and abusive relationships. I have been trying my best to depict this all both realistically and sensitively, and I will do my best to warn about difficult chapter content when it comes up--and please please let me know if I'm not doing a good enough job of this and if there's anything in particular that you need/want to be warned about, please let me know in the comments or on [tumblr](http://kingesstropolis.tumblr.com/)\--but I just want to make sure we're all on the same page here. Please, please be careful while reading if you know that this is a sensitive topic for you. (And seriously, please do let me know if there are things that you need/want to be warned about. No questions asked.)

Once they’re out of the apartment, Mont takes Jehan by the arm in a painfully tight grip and pulls him around the corner, away from any doors. Jehan yanks his arm away but Mont uses one hand to shove him up against the wall. There’s never been much of a size difference between the two of them. Mont is perhaps an inch or two taller and his body is a little more filled out, but Jehan’s not sure he’s ever noticed how much stronger Mont is before.

“What the hell is your problem?” Jehan snaps. His heart beats a staccato rhythm against his chest. He knew Mont was in a pissy mood, but he didn't expect this. _He promised not to hurt you. He’s not going to hit you. He promised he wouldn’t._

_Tread carefully._

“You don’t talk to me like that in front of your little friends, Jehan. I’m not some fucking kid you get to scold.”

“Well, that’s how you were acting,” Jehan says. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m not some toy that just lays around waiting for you to get bored, Mont! I told you I was busy! You can’t just show up like that and expect me to drop everything I’m doing to entertain you!”

“Why not? You expect me to do that for you.”

“What—”

“Oh, come on—we do everything on _your_ schedule. You expect me to put my life on hold for your school work and you expect me to drop everything and come running the instant you have one of your fucking little panic attacks—”

“Mont,” he says. Jehan feels like all the air has been forced from his lungs, because this isn’t how he perceives their relationship at all and he honestly feels a little sick that Mont would accuse him of using him like this.

“And I’m fucking sick of it, Jehan. I’m not—” He cuts himself off when a new pair of voices—this set light with laughter—echoes down the hall.

Mont gives him a look, as though daring him to say anything. He takes Jehan by the arm again—his grip is hard enough to bruise and Jehan checks the instinct to pull away because he doesn’t think it’ll help—and tugs him close.

“We’ll finish this at home,” he hisses. He wraps an arm around Jehan’s shoulders and steers him away from the wall and towards the stairwell. Jehan trips over his own feet to keep pace. Anger and anxiety war for dominance in his chest. When they pass the other couple in the hall, the woman offers a friendly smile and Jehan forces himself to reciprocate.

Mont hails them a cab and practically shoves Jehan into it. Jehan sits as close to the door as he can, clutching his laptop case to him. Mont slides in all the way next to him, one possessive hand on Jehan’s knee, and snaps orders for the cabbie to take them home.

The undercurrent of anger doesn’t dissipate and once they get to their apartment building, Mont manhandles him upstairs. Mont slams the door shut behind them once they get to their small, shared apartment and something about Mont’s attitude and anger reminds him eerily of all the times he was called into his dad’s study growing up to be scolded or yelled at or told what a disappointment he was. Those memories do nothing to help him now.

He swallows, shoves aside the twisting sensation in his stomach, and summons his courage. Mont is not his father. The two men couldn’t be any more different, and while standing up to his dad always leaves a sick taste in his mouth, he’s never had any trouble telling Mont exactly what he thinks. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Jehan says, tossing his laptop on the couch.

Mont paces the length of their living room like a caged animal.

“I’m sick of your selfish attitude, that’s what.”

“My selfish—what? Mont, please, let’s just talk about this.”

“I bend over backwards to help you out, bird, and you’d rather run out and play with your fucking little friends!”

“We were just studying for finals! You were there! I was just trying to work—”

“You could have worked here!”

“The last time I tried to work here, you let Gueulemer threaten to rape me!”

“Fuck it, how many times do I have to tell you that he was just joking—”

“It’s not funny to joke about something like that!”

“You know—you fucking know I would never let anything happen to you!”

“Yeah, that’s why you hit me the other day!” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, but he regrets them immediately. He regrets the way it makes anger flash in Mont’s eyes.

“So that is what this about.”

“I don’t _know_ what this is about,” Jehan snaps, Mont’s temper feeding into his own. “I don’t know why you’re acting this way!”

“I told you I didn’t mean to do that—you’re the one who made me that angry! If you hadn’t pissed me off, we would have been fine!”

“I’m sorry, okay!” He’s not entirely sure what he’s apologizing for. “I’m sorry, but can we please just—”

“Did you tell them?”

Mont closes the distance between them and Jehan takes a step back. When his legs hit the couch, he sits down. Mont practically towers over him. A little of his anger gives way to fear.

“What?”

“Your so-called friends. Those fucking little boy scouts—did you tell them?”

“Tell them what?”

“That I hit you!”

“No!”

“I’m not blind, Jehan! I saw the way they were looking at me. You told them—I make one fucking mistake and you broadcast it all over town!”

“Mont, I didn’t—I swear, I haven’t told anyone!”

“I told you it wasn’t going to fucking happen again! Why did you have to go and run your mouth?”

“I didn’t,” Jehan says again. He tries to sound stronger than he feels because right now, he feels ill. Sure, he and Mont have argued before, but Mont towers over him and he can still remember the feeling of Mont smacking him and he can feel anxiety clawing its way through his stomach. “Could you please sit down? You’re scaring me.”

“Here you go again—bossing me around because of your fucking feelings.” Even still, Mont takes a few steps back.

He breathes a little easier now that Mont isn’t standing over him. “I’m not going to apologize because _you’re_ acting unreasonable.”

“ _I’m_ unreasonable? Fuck, Jehan, I’m not the little shit who ran his mouth about something that wasn’t even a big fucking deal!”

“I told you, I didn’t—” He cuts himself off. If Mont wants to carry on like this, fine, but that doesn’t mean Jehan has to participate. “You know what? I’m not going to deal with you when you’re like this,” he says, getting to his feet. “Call me when you calm down.”

He moves to the door, but Mont is quicker and Jehan’s not sure how it happened but suddenly he’s pinned with his back against the door and Mont reaches around him to lock it.

Apparently trying to leave was the wrong thing to do because Mont’s eyes are like ice.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he says.

Mont is standing so close that he’s practically on top of him and Jehan stomps his heel down on the top of Mont’s foot before trying to shove him away. Mont catches one of his wrists, gripping it hard enough to bruise and Jehan lashes out with his other hand, the heel of his palm catching Mont’s face, but it only makes Mont angrier. Mont jerks his arm, wrenching it so hard that Jehan loses his balance, stumbling forward into Mont before Mont pins him back against the door.

Maybe fighting back isn’t the best option right now—not when Mont is caught right on the edge of violence himself.

Jehan takes a shaky breath and changes tactics. “Mont, love, please, just let me go. Please. I swear I won’t tell anyone about this, but please just—”

Mont’s hand closes around his throat, effectively cutting him off. “You don’t get to talk.”

“Mont—”

Mont pulls him away from the door before slamming him back against it. “I said to shut your mouth!”

Somewhere during all of this, Mont has procured the butterfly knife that he normally carries with him. Jehan never understood why people said they were terrified of Montparnasse because, yeah, he could be a little intimidating, but Jehan never saw him as anything remotely _terrifying_.

Now that Mont has one hand wrapped around his throat and another wrapped around a knife and his eyes look so cold that they almost look dead, he understands.

“Please, Mont, please,” he says. It’s getting hard to breathe. “You’re scaring me. Please, just put down the knife. I won’t go anywhere, I swear, but please. You promised you wouldn’t do this again. Please put down the knife. Please—”

Mont lets go of his throat but grips him by the collar of his shirt and uses that to pull him away from the door and fling him to the ground in the middle of their living room. Jehan hears his shirt rip.

“Do you think it’s easy for me?!”

Jehan tries to scramble away, but Mont grabs a fistful of hair to keep him in place.

“Do you think it’s easy putting up with all your goddamn emotional shit?”

“Mont, please—”

“You’re lucky to have me, Jehan! No one else could deal with your shit all the time!”

His shoulder aches from where he hit the floor and he’s vaguely aware that he might be crying, but he does the only thing he can think of and he kicks out at Mont, catching him somewhere near his knee, and he’s scrambling towards the bathroom because it’s the one room in the apartment that has a lock, but Mont catches him by the hair again and yanks him back to the ground. Jehan struggles, he tries to fight back.

“You promised,” he says. “Mont, please, you promised.”

But Mont is stronger than he is and Jehan curls up around himself, trying to protect himself from forceful blows that seem unceasing. He loses track of time. Loses track of everything beyond the unspoken prayers that cling to his lips. _Please, God, let this stop_.

It’s a moment or two after the blows stop before Jehan realizes it’s over. His ears are ringing and his head spinning and Mont is still standing over him but he’s on the phone.

“I’m fucking busy right now, Babet,” he says. “No—I don’t fucking—Are you all incompetent fuck nuts? I’ll be there in five fucking minutes, try not to screw anything else up.”

Mont steps over Jehan and leaves, slamming the door behind him.

For a long time, Jehan doesn’t move. He doesn’t dare to. His body hurts and he aches and his face is wet—most likely from tears but maybe blood too, he doesn’t know—and he’s reeling. He can feel panic building in his chest, that vast hollow feeling that makes it hard to breathe, but he can’t do anything but shake as the feeling grows.

He doesn’t know how long he lays there, but eventually a gentle buzzing against his leg pulls his focus off his body and back to reality. He’s on the floor. He’s in pain. Someone is trying to get a hold of him. He pushes himself upright and scoots back until he can brace himself against the wall. He pulls out his phone. He suspects it’s probably Mont.

He nearly sobs with relief when he sees the number on the screen.

“Courf,” he says, answering the phone.

“Hey, Jehan,” Courfeyrac’s voice is bright and chipper and happy and stable, just as it always is. “I just wanted to—are you okay? You sound kind of funny.”

“I’m fine,” he says quickly.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m just a little stressed, you know? I’ve got all these papers and finals and it’s just weighing on me, I guess.”

Courfeyrac is quiet for a minute before he says, “Just end of the semester woes, then? It’s nothing more serious than that?”

“Nope,” he says. He forces himself to smile a little even though he knows Courfeyrac can’t see him. He pulls his knees up to his chest and allows himself to pretend that nothing in the last hour actually happened. He pretends that nothing exists in the world except the sound of Courfeyrac’s voice. “What is it you called about?”

“Oh, right,” Courfeyrac says. “I just wanted to check if you were still okay dropping off some dinner at Feuilly’s place tonight—since he works every night this week, remember?—but on second thought, I am going to absolve you of this particular responsibility.”

Guilt twists at his stomach. “No, no, I can still do it,” he says. But Mont probably won’t be okay with this at all. Mont probably doesn’t want him to leave. Tears prick at his eyes again.

“No,” Courfeyrac says gently. “You sound overwhelmed enough as it is. I’ll pick up some fast food for him and bring it by. You focus on…whatever it is you need to focus on. Oh! I could bring something for you, too, if you’re too busy or stressed or whatever to cook tonight.”

“No,” Jehan says quickly. The last thing he wants is for Courfeyrac to be anywhere near here. “No, Mont’s taking care of it, and I live in the opposite direction from Feuilly’s place. I don’t want to trouble you at all. You’ve got finals and things too.”

“Are you sure? Because it’s really no trouble.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Courfeyrac hesitates for a moment. “You give me a call if you need anything, okay? Even if it’s just a sympathetic ear.”

“Yeah,” Jehan says. “Thanks for calling.” He hears someone fumbling at the door. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Yeah, sure,” Courfeyrac says. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Take it easy.”

“Yeah, thanks. Bye.”

He hangs up the phone right as Mont opens the door. He’s carrying a few grocery bags and Jehan stares at him blankly, not sure how he’s supposed to act and unwilling to provoke his boyfriend’s temper again.

But it seems that his earlier anger has fled and Mont looks oddly…crushed as he looks on Jehan. “Oh, bird,” he says. His voice is gentle, as though he’s worried one wrong world will cause Jehan to shatter. “You look awful. I—you've gotta forgive me. I didn’t mean any of that. You know I didn’t mean any of that.”

He drops his grocery bags by the door and crouches in front of him, gently pushing hair back from his face. He winces when Jehan pulls back from the touch.

“You promised,” Jehan says softly.

“I know, bird, I know. You just made me so angry. All of this made me so angry. I can’t control myself when I’m like that.” He gently wipes fallen tears off Jehan’s cheek with his thumb. “Were you on the phone?”

“R called,” he says. He doesn’t consciously make the decision to lie. “I left one of my books at his place and he wanted to check that I wouldn’t need it tonight.”

“Do you? I can go get it for you.”

“No, I told him I’d get it from him on campus on Monday.”

Mont nods. “I stopped by the grocery store on my way home,” he says. “I got some stuff so I can make dinner and some…some painkillers for you. I thought you might want them. There’s some beer too, but I know you want to cut back. But it’s here. If you want it.”

“Thanks,” Jehan says.

Mont gently helps him to his feet. “You probably feel like shit,” he says. “Let me draw you a hot bath. It’ll help with the stiff muscles.”

Jehan leans into his boyfriend when he wraps an arm around his waist and helps him shuffle to the bathroom. Jehan sits on the toilet as Mont fiddles over the tub. His body still hurts, but as for everything else, he just feels strangely empty.

“Where do you keep those fancy bath salts you like?” Mont asks. He’s clearly determined to make this as relaxing for Jehan as he can.

“Under the sink,” he says.

Mont adds the bath salts and then helps Jehan undress and helps him into the tub. Jehan refuses to look at himself, refuses to look at the bruises he know must be blossoming over his chest like flowers in a spring garden, but the hot water does immediate wonders for his aching muscles. Mont sits at the edge of the tub with him.

“Is there anything you want me to do for you?” he says. “I can stay, if you like. I can go get the poetry book you’ve been reading and read to you.”

Jehan shakes his head. “Dinner might be nice.”

Mont presses a tender kiss to the crown of his head. “I’ll make you the best damn dinner you’ve ever had.”

He doesn’t close the door all the way when he leaves. He leaves it open, just a crack, presumably so Jehan can holler for him if he needs anything.

All it really means is that Jehan has to keep quiet as he cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends. I know I say this with every chapter, but I really do appreciate all the comments and all the support you all have shown me throughout this fic. You're all lovely, wonderful people and I am very deeply sorry if I have emotionally traumatized you at the hands of fictional characters. 
> 
> The next chapter--which I promise is less traumatizing than this one--will be posted on Friday.


	40. Chapter Forty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac and Jehan talk at the Musain

Considering it’s a Monday night, the Musain is relatively empty. There are a handful of couples huddled around tables-for-two, but most of the Musain's revenue tonight (as most nights) comes from Courfyerac and his friends. But even they're in small numbers today. Courfeyrac shares a table with Enjolras and Combeferre as they try to sort some of the details for a fundraiser dinner in two weeks. The event is more of a party than anything, which means most of the responsibilities for organizing it fall in Courfeyrac’s lap because leaving Enjolras and Combeferre in charge of anything remotely resembling a party is just asking for trouble. Boring trouble, but trouble nonetheless. Bossuet, Feuilly, and Musichetta are at a table adjacent to theirs, discussing holiday plans over a collection of open textbooks. Jehan is the only other one there, sitting alone at a table in the corner with books and notebooks spread around him. Despite the fact that it’s rather warm in the Musain today, Jehan is wearing a thick sweater with the sleeves rolled down and he has a scarf wrapped around his neck.

Even as Courfeyrac talks with Enjolras and Combeferre and confirms details and plans, his gaze keeps drifting back to Jehan. Combeferre filled him in about Montparnasse’s ultra-douchey behavior from three nights ago and Enjolras assured him that Grantaire had checked in with Jehan a few hours after he left with Montparnasse and Jehan insisted that he was fine—he and Mont argued a little, he had said, but everything was fine. Courfeyrac wants to believe him, wants to believe that everything is perfectly okay, but he can’t. Jehan’s been unusually quiet these last few days and Courfeyrac remembers how shaky and unsettled Jehan sounded on the phone the other night and he’s seen enough of the poet’s relationship with his boyfriend to have reasonable cause to feel uneasy about them arguing.

When he’s finished with Combeferre and Enjolras—he can’t be certain, but he’s pretty sure Combeferre has been watching the way he keeps looking at Jehan and wraps things up quickly because he knows Courfeyrac’s anxious to slip away to talk to the poet—he excuses himself to join Jehan at his table. Jehan looks up when he sits down and offers up a smile, as usual, but the expression fades within seconds.

 “What are you working on?” Courfeyrac asks. Jehan has his notebook open in front of him and from what Courfeyrac can tell, most of the page is just covered in doodles.

“Just trying to write,” he says. “I haven’t been able to write anything in a few weeks, and I was hoping to just force myself to get over it.”

“Writer’s block, then?”

“I don’t believe in writer’s block,” Jehan says. “Sometimes there’s a problem with writing, yes, but all claiming ‘writer’s block’ does is mask the real problem.”

“So what is the real problem?”

Jehan looks down at his notebook and frowns a little. “I wish I knew.”

Jehan’s distress is more than obvious, but Courfeyrac decides to push past it and steer their conversation onto something neutral. “So how do you get over writer’s block—or whatever this is?”

“You make yourself write,” he says. “I’ve got a couple tricks that normally help—making lists, morning free writing, that sort of thing, but none of those have been working, so I decided I would do a ‘This is Just to Say’ parody—”

“A what?”

“‘This is Just to Say,’” he says. “It’s a poem by William Carlos Williams— _I have eaten/ the plums/that were in/ the icebox/and which/ you were probably/ saving/ for breakfast/ Forgive me/ they were delicious/ so sweet/ and so cold_.”

Courfeyrac likes the way that Jehan can rattle off poems from memory off the cuff like this. “That’s a poem?” he says. “Doesn’t sound like much of one.”

“Williams keeps it short,” he says. “Anyway, this particular poem is particularly fun to spoof. I think Kenneth Koch started it with _I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer./ I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting._ And from there people just kept going and doing line for line parodies can sometimes, I don’t know, un-block me, but...” He trails off with a gesture at the abstract doodles in his notebook.

“Why do you think it’s not working this time?”

He shrugs. “I keep getting hung up on the original. I realized the narrator never apologizes.”

“What?”

“He never says he’s sorry. He ate the plums and he admits it, but he just...demands forgiveness. He doesn’t even ask for it—he just says, ‘forgive me.’ He never actually apologizes for what he did.”

It doesn’t take a poet or a genius to realize that Jehan’s hung up on more than just the narrator’s lack of apologies, and it’s not much of a stretch to assume that this has something between whatever drama is going on between him and his boyfriend.

Before Courfeyrac can ask how things are on the relationship front, Musichetta pulls up a chair to the table. She smiles at both of them. “Jehan, I’ve got a question for you,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Grantaire mentioned that you play the flute. Is that right?”

“I haven’t played much since high school, but yeah, I know how to play.”

“Oh good,” she says. “Here’s the thing—Joly and I are trying to get a group together to go caroling to patients at the hospital—you know, bring them some holiday cheer and all that—and I found this _beautiful_ arrangement of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman’ that has this stunning little flute accompaniment. Would you be interested in playing with us?”

Jehan smiles—really smiles, which makes Courfeyrac realize that he hasn’t seen Jehan smile properly in ages. “I would love to. Do you have a copy of the sheet music? I’m probably a little rusty, so I’d like to practice before—” He cuts himself off abruptly and frowns a little. “Did you say when this would be?”

“We’re thinking about doing it right after finals,” she says.

He nods. “I just—I should probably check with my boyfriend before I commit to this. He’s gotten in the habit lately of making plans for us without telling me, and then he gets annoyed when I accidentally make conflicting plans. So I should just check first.”

“Not a problem,” she says. “You’ve got my number, right? You can just text me once you know for sure if you can do it or not.”

“Sounds good,” he says.

Courfeyrac watches Musichetta leave before he turns his attention back to Jehan.

“So how long has he been doing that?” Courfeyrac asks.

“How long has who been doing what?”

“Your boyfriend,” he says, “making plans like that.”

“He’s not,” Jehan says, looking a little sheepish. “I mean, he’s gotten annoyed with me for making plans without checking with him even though he doesn’t have anything specific planned—we’ve just both been busy. I think it bothers him that we’re not spending much time together, so he gets annoyed when I make plans without checking with him first. I just didn’t want Chetta...”

His voice trails off and Courfeyrac can fill in the blanks. _I didn’t want Chetta to know that I have to consult with my boyfriend before committing to any sort of plan. I didn’t want Chetta to know that my boyfriend gets angry at me for not spending time with him. I didn’t want Chetta to know that my boyfriend has final say over my schedule_. Courfeyrac chews on his lip as he tries to find the most tactful way to ask this next question.

“Don’t you think,” he says slowly, “that it might be...problematic that you feel you have to check with Montparnasse before making simple plans?”

Jehan shrugs. “Just seems courteous to me.”

“Look, I’m not...I’m not trying to attack you or your relationship or anything, Jehan, but we’re worried about you.”

“You don’t need to be worried,” he says. “There’s nothing to be worried about.”

“The sort of controlling behavior that Montparnasse has been showing lately—the way he’s always checking in on you, the way you can’t make plans without consulting him first—those are bad signs, Jehan, and they can escalate into something worse.”

“Things have been tense between Mont and me,” Jehan says, “but we’re working on it.”

Courfeyrac nods. “I’m going to tell you a little story,” he says. He’s been thinking about bringing this up since before Thanksgiving, and now seems like a good time. “And I just want you to listen, okay?”

Jehan nods.

“So around this time, about two years ago, I started dating this guy. His name was Richard.” To this day, Combeferre can’t hear the name _Richard_ without getting a murderous look in his eye, and Enjolras swears every time Courfeyrac talks about this disaster of a relationship. “He was a doctoral candidate when I met him—something about nuclear engineering that was _way_ over my head—and he was quite a bit older than me and definitely more experienced me than me, and I fell for him, hard and fast.”

Which, of course, was how he used to fall for everyone. He used to have no notion of taking things slow, of letting his relationships—and even some of his flings—develop at a more comfortable pace.

Richard had changed that for him.

“From the start of our relationship, Richard liked to take charge. He liked to set the pace at which we moved, he liked to call the shots in our relationship, he liked to boss me around in bed and then praise me for making him feel so good—and at the beginning, I found it all really sexy. I kind of liked having him take charge. It made me feel like he cared enough about me to take care of me, which was something I had lacked in my previous relationships with men.

“After a while, Combeferre and Enjolras—we all shared an apartment at the time—and they got sick of always walking in on Richard and me making out—or more—in the living room or in my bedroom with the door open, and so I started moving my stuff over to Richard’s apartment. At first, I realized that spending more time with him meant spending less time with my friends—and you know how much I love my friends, you guys are like family to me, I’d do anything for any of you—and I did my best to make sure I still made time for everyone. I made sure I was around and available and the same old Courf that everyone loved, and Richard didn’t like that. He didn’t tell me that he didn’t like it, but looking back. . .” He shrugs.

“He started insisting that he come everywhere with me and my friends. He didn’t like me spending time without him—especially if I was hanging out with other guys without him, never mind that this was before Joly and Bossuet became a thing so as far as I knew, all my friends were completely straight. Over time, it became easier just to spend more time with him and less with my friends because I didn’t like to make him upset—and it was always my fault when he was upset. He never took ownership of his own emotions.

“And from there, things escalated. By February, I was getting calls from my sister on behalf of my mom because I wasn’t answering calls from my parents because I knew they didn’t approve of my relationship. I would see other people maybe once a week—to the point that Ferre came looking for me at Richard’s apartment to express concern because he couldn’t get a hold me any other way. In March, things got...difficult. I got into a huge fight with Enjolras and Richard somehow used that as proof that my friends didn’t really care about me, that they wanted me to be someone I’m not.

“After the fight, I didn’t hear from or see anyone for weeks, and in that time, when I was isolated from any sort of support network which I have no doubt that Richard was very much aware of, Richard got more controlling, more possessive. He didn’t like me leaving the apartment without him. Every time I was gone, he thought I was cheating on him. He would hurl the most ridiculous accusations at me and nothing I did could convince him that I wasn’t cheating on him, that I had no intention of cheating on him. He told me he didn’t think he could live without me, that I meant everything to him. In short, he was a lying, manipulative bastard. 

“When I finally realized that enough was enough and I wanted to mend whatever hurt feelings stood between me and my friends, Richard got angry. He broke my cell phone when I tried to text Ferre. He started insulting me—telling me that I was some incompetent little boy who couldn’t take care of himself, that I was a desperate, needy whore, that I was nothing without him—and that was a final straw for me. I didn’t recognize that the control and the manipulation was a problem, but I knew the name-calling was, so I packed up my stuff and moved back in with Enjolras and Combeferre that night, and they welcomed me home without any guilt or blame or reservations.

“I was a bit of a mess for a while after that,” he says. “I felt like I had to somehow earn my friend’s forgiveness, like I was somehow at fault for everything that had happened, even though it had been obvious to everyone else in the world that my relationship was, at best, extremely unhealthy. At my sister’s suggestion, I started seeing a therapist to deal with all the shit baggage that Richard had left me with and as I gained distance and perspective, I realized that that relationship had never been good. It was always abusive, but I didn’t see it as that because he wasn’t hitting me or calling me names. And so when I see your boyfriend doing the same things that Richard used to do—the constant checking up on you, needing to approve your schedule, not wanting you to spend time with people who aren’t him—it makes me worried, Jehan.”

Jehan is quiet for a moment like he’s thinking over everything Courfeyrac said before he speaks. “Thank you for telling me that—really, I appreciate your honesty and I’m glad for you that you’re in a better place now—but your relationship with Richard and mine with Mont are completely different.”

“You’re right,” Courfeyrac says. “I believe that you and Mont started dating because you were mutually interested and had a mutual respect for each other. I started dating Richard because I thought he was hot, and he started dating me because he was looking for someone naïve enough to manipulate. Here’s the thing, though, Jehan, abusive relationships all start on different roads and different paths, but they all end the same way. If he’s willing to control and manipulate you, if he’s willing to make you think that it’s your fault that he’s angry or that it’s not his own fault he lost his temper, then it’s not much farther down the road before he’s willing to hit you—and once he’s willing to hit you, Jehan, there’s not much he’ll be _unwilling_ to do.”

“Things with Mont and I aren’t that bad,” Jehan says, but there’s something in his voice—something like fear or regret that Courfeyrac can’t quite identify and he’s not willing to push yet. If he pushes too soon, Jehan will withdraw. He’ll pull away from this support network, and things will only get worse from there. Courfeyrac refuses to let that happen. “I love him,” Jehan adds, as though that somehow negates the fact that things are bad between them, just not _that_ bad.

“Make sure he loves you too, okay?” Courfeyrac says. “And remember that everyone here—we love you too, and if you _ever_ need anything from any of us, you only have to ask.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jehan says.

Courfeyrac reaches across the table and squeezes Jehan’s hand. He doesn’t miss the way Jehan tenses under the skin-to-skin contact. _Please let it not have gotten violent between them yet. Please_. He gives Jehan a thin smile because it’s the most that he can manage at the moment. “Make sure that you do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy weekend, everyone :) Thanks as ever for the kudos/comments/general support vibes. You really are the very best sort of people.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday


	41. Chapter Forty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan talks things over with Mont

Jehan spends days quietly thinking over Courfeyrac’s words. His appreciation for Courfeyrac’s concern is more than he can articulate, and his words are worth consideration. Courfeyrac has been an amazing friend and a remarkable support to him over the last month, and he’s really not sure how he’s managed the last nineteen years of his life without him. Of course, though, Courfeyrac has no idea how strained things between Jehan and Mont have grown—he can’t have any idea because Jehan has done his best to make sure that none if his friends know, even though Eponine and Grantaire have both developed the habit of regularly checking up on him.

(Between the way they check up on him when he’s with Mont, and the way Mont checks up on him when he’s with them, it’s a wonder that he has any time to himself without his phone going off.)

It’s not that he feels the need to keep the violence that has blossomed in his life a secret. Well, that’s not quite right, because he is keeping it a secret. But it’s not that he’s ashamed of what’s happening or that he believes he somehow deserves the bruises that cling to his rib cage. He doesn’t and he’s hurt that Mont treated him that way and the pain of that is nestled somewhere near his heart. But he knows how his friends will react if he tells them that twice now Mont has gotten angry enough to hit him.

Their anger on his behalf will, perhaps, be gratifying, and he knows that every one of them would be outraged if they knew. He can’t blame them because he remembers what it was like as a teenager, praying every day that Grantaire wouldn’t show up to school with a new black eye or broken arm and being devastated and feeling helpless every time that he did. But he knows that in the midst of their anger and their upset, his own feelings will be lost in the uproar. His friends will demand that he break up with Mont, that he leave for his own safety. They’ll want him to be angry and indignant that someone who loves him has treated him this way.

And he doesn’t want that.

He’s not sure what he wants, not really, but he knows he doesn’t want that. He still loves Mont. He’s still grateful for the love and support Mont has given him for more than a year—and longer than that, really, because he’s known Mont since he was sixteen and next to Grantaire, Mont was always someone he could depend on. Two fights—two instances of slipped temper—do nothing to change three years of friendship and one year of romance.

But he doesn’t want things continuing in the way that they have been. He doesn’t like the arguments, he doesn’t like the way he feels the need to tiptoe around Mont lest his temper explodes again. He doesn’t like the bruises that refuse to fade or the lack of security he feels in his life right now. He doesn’t like the way that Mont has been bottling something up, something which has poisoned his temper and turns him violent with little provocation. He doesn’t like that there are so many needs—both his own and Mont’s—in this relationship that aren’t being met.

And he misses the way things used to be enough that he’s willing to stand his ground for them. He’s willing to fight for them. If Mont’s not—then he’ll consider packing up and leaving. Then he’ll consider calling this whole thing quits. But if Mont is willing to fight to make this work, then he is too.

Jehan waits for a quiet moment to broach the subject. They’re alone in the apartment and it’s been a good day. Mont is in good humor as he does up the dinner dishes. He’s been attentive lately—almost to the point that Jehan would call it doting—and he’s been indescribably gentle. In the handful of days since their last fight, they’ve barely said more than pleasantries to each other. They’re both dancing around each other in some sort of mad waltz, each trying their best not to offend, not to upset.

Jehan sits at the kitchen table, cradling a mug of tea (white chocolate peppermint rooibos, which Mont procured for him two days ago) and a book of Mary Oliver poetry (yet another recent gift from Mont) laid out in front of him. He’s not reading the poems, though. He’s watching Mont and trying to summon the nerve to say what he needs to. He doesn’t want another argument. He doesn’t want another fight.

He just wants to talk. He wants to be heard and to listen in return.

He takes a sip of the tea. “Mont,” he says, “I think we should talk.”

Mont places another dish in their dish rack and turns to him. “What’s on your mind?”

Jehan takes a steadying breath and clutches at his mug a little harder, as though that alone will keep his hands from shaking. “I’m not happy with the way things are between us,” he says. “And honestly, I don’t think you are, either. Something is _wrong_ here, and I’m not placing blame, I’m not, but if something doesn’t change, we’re going to destroy each other and I don’t want that. I love you, Mont, and I want to talk about all of this and fix it before it ruins us both.”

“What exactly is it that you want to talk about?”

Good. This is good. Mont is, at the very least, open to the idea of talking about this. Jehan had been worried that even broaching the topic would make Mont clam up. “About the fights,” he says. “And...and the violence. And I think we could both be doing better at telling each other what’s really going.”

Mont takes a seat at the table, so he's sitting next to Jehan as opposed to across from him and Jehan appreciates it. Sitting across from each other would feel too confrontational.

“Bird, you know I feel wretched about what I did,” he says.

“I know,” he says. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I can barely stand to look at myself when I’m in the shower each morning because I’m still covered in bruises.” Red and purple and green bruises that cover almost inch of his chest and probably his back and yellowing bruises which decorate his arms and his neck where Mont has grabbed him. (A part of him feels lucky that Mont avoided hitting his face at all last Friday because it’s made it easier for him to keep this from his friends, but he knows that’s not really something people are supposed to be feel lucky about.)

“I didn’t mean to do any of that, you know that, Jehan. I just—everything made me so angry and I couldn’t control my temper. I just snapped. And the fact that you’re blaming me and refusing to let this go is just making it harder. You won’t let it go and it makes me feel like shit.”

Jehan puts his hand over Mont’s. “I’m not trying to place blame here,” he says. “Yes, I’m hurt and yes, I’m having a hard time relaxing around you right now, but I know that this isn’t like you. We’ve been together for more than a year now, and you’ve never treated me like that before. But something’s changed, and you don’t talk to me about anything anymore. All we do is fight and I don’t like that—I just want to get at the root of whatever’s festering between us.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say to fix this, Jehan.”

“I don’t need you to fix any of this. I just want to talk and we can work on this together. But something’s got to change.”

“And what do you think we need to be doing about this?” Mont says. “Can’t we just forget about it and move on?”

His voice is cold, a sign of slipping temper, and Jehan hesitates before speaking. He doesn’t want to misspeak, doesn’t want this to turn into something it’s not. “Honestly? I think the last thing we should be doing is pretending nothing’s wrong. We’ve been doing that for a month and it’s not working. I’m not—I don’t want to pin this all on you, Mont, but you’ve been different. You’ve changed.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, deftly sidestepping the topic and pinning the blame on Jehan.

“That’s because you won’t talk to me about it, Mont.”

“I don’t talk to you about those things because I’m trying to protect you from them—nothing good can come from you knowing.”

“You’ve always been really good about not telling me more than I need to know about what you do,” he says. “And I appreciate that, but Mont, honestly, whatever’s happened, you need to tell me. You normally don’t tell me things to try to protect me, but in this case, by telling me, you’re protecting me from yourself. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but it scares me and it’s making you act like someone you’re not. So please, Mont, talk to me. Let me know what’s going on.”

Mont hesitates, which is odd. He’s not the sort of man who hesitates over anything. He’s silent for a long moment, like he’s weighing his options—to tell the truth or to bury their problems in more lies or perhaps something in between. His face is blank and his eyes are cold, giving Jehan nothing to deduce Mont’s state of mind. When Mont does speak, his expression has settled into something…calculating. Neither honest nor dishonest. Neither open nor closed. Jehan’s not sure what to make of it.

“Do you remember that week I was gone at the beginning of November?” Mont asks.

“Kind of hard to forget it,” Jehan says.

“I was out doing some routine stuff with Gueulemer and Babet—nothing that you need to be...concerned about—but something went wrong.”

“I could have told you that.”

“What should have been a straightforward...business transaction turned violent and someone that I’ve known for years now—someone that I was...fond of—was killed.”

“What?” His chest feels like ice. This is the very last thing he expected to hear.

“I watched them bleed out on a dirty warehouse floor—and then I had to leave the body there and run for it because we weren’t safe where we were. We haven’t been able to go back to the warehouse since, so for all I know, the body is still there.”

“Oh my God—Mont,” Jehan says. "Why did you tell me this earlier?”

“The same reason I never tell you about anything involved in my line of work. I’m trying to keep you safe.”

Jehan shakes his head. “Not telling me what you were doing in that warehouse keeps me safe,” he says. “Not telling me that you watched someone you’ve known for years die violently on the job is denying yourself an emotional support network.”

“I don’t need a fucking support network.”

“Oh really?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “You watched someone die—and yes, death is normal and natural and sometimes beautiful, but it’s also normal that we don’t like being confronted with our mortality. And instead of processing that, you’ve ignored it. You shoved it away because you were trying to hide it from me. You were worried about me finding out, and in the process you neglected yourself. That’s not okay, Mont. That’s not the kind of relationship that I want to have. I don’t want you jeopardizing your emotional health because you’re worried about what I can or can’t handle.” He sighs. “And I’m sorry.”

“What the hell are you sorry for?”

“Because I haven’t been the easiest person to live with this month,” he says. “I was clingy once you came back, and then I got arrested, and then there was all that shit with my dad. I’ve been all over the place emotionally and I was so caught up in my own drama, I didn’t even stop to ask what was going with you. That’s my fault. Just because I’ve got shit to deal with doesn’t give me the right to neglect you, and I’m sorry for that.”

Looking back, so much of Mont’s behavior now makes sense. He’s been possessive and overprotective—both of which seem to Jehan like reasonable (if a little unhealthy) reactions to watching someone else die. Jehan’s always been strangely comfortable with the idea of death—something Grantaire blames on an overexposure to macabre poetry—but he knows that other people aren’t as comfortable as he is and he won’t deny that watching someone you know die violently without the ability to help would be traumatizing. No wonder Mont’s temper has been so short.

“What happened to me doesn’t change what I did to you. You know I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know,” Jehan says.

Mont gets to his feet and holds out his hand to Jehan. “C’mere.”

Mont pulls him to his feet when he takes his hand and pulls him in for a hug. He tucks his head against Mont’s shoulder. This. This is what he’s missed in their relationship for so long. Mont always made him feel so safe and so strong, like he could take on anything, and he hasn’t felt like this in more than a month.

“I know it’s hard for you,” Jehan says, “but could you try to be more open with me in the future? I hate that you’ve been dealing with all of this without telling me.”

“I can do that,” Mont says. He presses a kiss to the side of Jehan’s head.

“And I'll try to check all my personal drama,” he says. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to choose between taking care of me and allowing yourself to grieve. That’s not a choice you should have to make.”

“You’ll have to be patient with me,” Mont says.

“Of course,” Jehan says. “Of course I’ll be patient.”

He just feels so relieved to have this all out in the open. He probably would have agreed to anything Mont asked. They share a kiss—tender and strong and all the things it should be—and Mont goes back to the dishes and Jehan goes back to his tea.

A few hours later, they go to bed together and for the first time in nearly a month, Jehan feels relaxed enough to fall asleep in Mont’s arms. He knows that their troubles are far from over, but he feels safe and secure.

And for now, that’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I really have to get this off my chest: when I realized that this was the chapter that was going to get posted on April Fool's Day I was _so very very_ tempted to try to play it off as though this were the last chapter and this was supposed to be the ending of the fic, but I couldn't do it. I thought that was way too mean--and as much as I adore good-natured April Fool's Day jokes, I don't have much patience for mean or tasteless ones. So instead of actually doing it, I'm just telling you guys what I would have done if I were a heartless jerk haha. I love you all  <3
> 
> (In other news, can I just say how delighted I am that chapter 41 gets to be posted on April 1 (ie 4/1, which is like 41, get it?) I've got a weird thing about numbers. I blame my eighteen months as a grocery store cashier.)
> 
> Anyway, thanks so much for your support and good vibes and all that and the next chapter will be up on Friday :)


	42. Chapter Forty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire has a rough day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for brief mention of self-harm ideation

By the last Reading Day on campus before finals, Grantaire has finished his various art portfolios and BS-ed his way through the paper he had due for his art history class and he's able to relax. His classes all have portfolios and papers in lieu of final exams but because the university still insists that they have a "final" during the scheduled period, most of Grantaire's finals week consists of class parties and the occasional presentation and critique of a particular work of art. It's absolutely nothing to stress over. Jehan, as a lit major, is the only other one whose work and stress load actually decreases during finals week.

Despite the impending doom of finals week, though, Courfeyrac had arranged something of a small party Marius’s apartment for the afternoon of the last Reading Day to give everyone a chance to relax and unwind a little before finals start. Everyone is there, including Enjolras who had to have his phone confiscated by Courfeyrac because he kept pulling up his notes for one of his classes and trying to study during the party, and Grantaire sits in the corner by himself and tries to sketch. The page is covered with mini-sketches and half-finished doodles that he can't seem to complete.

But he needs to sketch. He needs to keep his hands busy, his mind busy. He can't think about the way the skin on his arm itches, the way it begs to be cut to relieve the tension in the skin. He can't think about the way his body aches for just one more drink, just one more shot of alcohol to soothe and quiet the diatribe of self-hate and self-doubt and _hell,_ he just wants to make this all go away but all he has is a sketchpad and a pencil and friends who talk loud enough that for a moment or two he can focus on them instead of himself.

Everyone else is in good form and high spirits, with the possible exception of Jehan, who’s curled up on the couch at the other end of the room with a notebook on his lap and quietly observing instead of participating. Grantaire’s not sure if this is normal, introverted Jehan quiet or if there’s something more at play here.

Courfeyrac is trying to convince Combeferre, Bahorel, and Joly that their game of poker should be a game of strip poker (“Come on, guys, what’s a little nudity between friends?”) while Feuilly and Enjolras talk the recent protests in Ukraine. Marius is at the piano, playing Disney songs while Cosette, Chetta, and Bossuet sing along enthusiastically if not particularly on key. Eponine, meanwhile, is on the phone with the social worker in charge of Azelma and Gavroche, doing her best to convince the social worker to let her siblings live here until final custody has been determined. She’s been on the phone for almost an hour now and Grantaire doesn’t doubt that she won’t hang up until she gets her way.

Every so often, Combeferre looks up from his card game to watch her pace back and forth across the apartment as she talks and Grantaire does his best to capture the look of concern and devotion on Combeferre’s face as he sketches the crowd before him.

When Eponine final gets off the phone, she’s beaming from ear to ear.

“They’re letting Azelma and Gav come stay with me!” she announces to the room. “They get to live here—at least for a little while!”

The room erupts into a celebratory uproar and Combeferre is on his feet, his arms around her waist, spinning her around. Her laughter fills the air and Grantaire’s not sure if he’s ever seen Eponine look so happy. She deserves it, of course. She deserves every ounce of happiness that comes her away, especially after all the misery and worry that he knows he’s caused her over the years. It’ll be nice for her to live here quietly with her siblings—especially after he moves out.

He knew this was coming. He knew he would be moving out as soon as Eponine got the approval to house her siblings, but he’s not quite prepared for the bitterness he feels. It’s not like he has anywhere to go. Sure, Parnasse would probably let him crash on his couch for a bit—especially if Jehan insisted on it—but the two of them are still working through some weird relationship funk and the last thing they’ll need is for their moody and unstable friend to crash on their couch.

Whatever. He’ll figure it out. This is what homeless shelters are for.

Marius and Courfeyrac distribute celebratory beers to the group and Grantaire declines the bottle Marius offers him with a slight shake of his head, even though he wants nothing more than to take it and guzzle it down. He’s limiting himself to one drink a day, and it’s better if he drinks just before bed, otherwise he’s not going to be able to sleep at all. Jehan, who undoubtedly notices that Grantaire refused a drink, refuses his as well. A small solidarity. A small comfort.

Not comfort enough.

Once the commotion dies down a little, Eponine pulls up a chair next Grantaire. He glances at her, sees the breathless happiness on her face, and turns his attention back to his newest sketch—Jehan curled up on the armchair like a cat and looking at Courfeyrac, perched on the armrest, with a sliver of a smile pulling at his mouth. It’s the happiest Jehan’s looked all day.

“I can’t believe it,” Eponine says. “I didn’t think—I mean, I hoped, I really hoped, but I didn’t think that they’d actually let them stay with me, you know? I know it’s only temporary for now, but Enjolras says that getting temporary custody now will help me get final custody later, you know? I just feel…I feel so light, R. I can’t remember ever feeling like this before.”

“I’m happy for you,” he says. His doodle of Jehan and Courfeyrac is small, but he does his best to capture the way Courfeyrac looks at the poet. He fights the urge to just scribble over the sketch when he can’t get it right. “When do you need me to move out?”

“What?”

“I always said I’d move out once your siblings could move in,” he says. “And that day is now. I don’t have much to pack, so I can probably be out by the end of the week.”

“I—do you even have anywhere to go?” she asks.

“No, but I’ll figure something out. I always do.”

She grabs hold of his wrist, stilling the motion of his hand as he draws. “Shit, R, do you really think I’d just kick you to the curb when you don’t have anywhere else to stay?”

“What else do you expect to do? This is a three bedroom apartment. There’s not room for all of us.”

“Like hell there isn’t room,” she says. “Gav can sleep on the couch for a bit. Or you could sleep on the couch, if you want him to have a room. Or you two could share. Or Azelma and I can share. Or I can sleep on the couch and the three of you can have rooms. They’re used to living with far less space than we have here, or have your forgotten that I used to share a single motel room with them?”

“You shouldn’t have to cram just because of me. You all deserve to relax for a bit.”

“Besides, R,” she says, ignoring his latest counter-argument, “this is only temporary. They might not get to stay here, and then you’ll have moved out for nothing. And you’re nuts if you think I’m going to kick you out when you’re like this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says gruffly.

She gives him a look, not without sympathy but one that clearly suggests she thinks he’s being ridiculous. “I’ve known you since forever, R,” she says quietly. “I can tell when you’re having a rough time. I know you’ve been cutting back on the drinking and I’m so proud of the progress you’ve made, but I’m not blind, okay? You’re keeping odd hours. You’re wearing rubber bands around your wrist so you can snap them to distract yourself. You deny anything that remotely resembles a compliment when it comes your way. We’ve walked down this road together before, and I’m not just going to abandon you in the middle of it.”

“You shouldn’t be worrying about me,” he says. “You’ve got more important things—”

“ _You_ are one of those important things,” she says. “This isn’t a discussion, okay? Gav and Azelma will be here by the end of finals week and we’ll all snuggle up in here comfy-cozy. If I do get permanent custody in the end, we can talk about you moving out then, but not now, okay?”

Grantaire doesn’t say anything. He just pulls his wrist away and continues his sketch.

She sighs. “I’m taking your silence as an affirmation,” she says. She presses a kiss to his cheek then gets up to rejoin Combeferre.

Once she’s gone, he throws himself back into his art with renewed vigor. He doesn’t want to think about any of this. He doesn’t want to think at all, so he allows his mind to be consumed with the smallest details of the physical world around him as he tries to capture it all one paper…and wouldn’t you know? He can’t even get that right.

“So this is what you’ve been up to all afternoon.”

Grantaire jerks so badly that his pencil crosses right through a sketch he did earlier of Bossuet and Joly. He didn’t even notice Enjolras sitting down in the chair Eponine vacated.

“Sorry,” Enjolras says. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I didn’t mean to ruin your picture.”

Grantaire flips his pencil around and gently erases the line, doing his best not to ruin the sketch even more. “It was ruined long before you got here,” he mutters.

“What? You can’t mean that. These all look amazing.”

“Right,” he says. Absently, he tugs down the sleeves of his shirt, just to make sure that none of his scars peak out. The last thing he needs right now is for Enjolras to see the proof of yet another personal failing.

“Really, though,” Enjolras says, leaning closer to him to study the half-dozen sketches on the page better. Like everything else Enjolras studies, he does so intently. “These are all really good. Hell, I can barely draw stick figures.”

“Stick figures—that makes you a regular art critic, that does.”

Enjolras sighs. Grantaire can hear the frustration in it. Of course. He’s completely incapable of having anything that resembles a civil conversation with Enjolras. He’s such a regular fuck up that he can’t help but aggravate the other man. Lately they’ve been getting on rather well, but it really only was a matter of time before Grantaire screwed that up. “I was just trying to compliment you on a talent that I really appreciate.”

“Well, when I draw something worthy of a compliment, I’ll let you have another go at it,” he says.

“I’m not trying to give you pity compliments, if that’s what you think,” Enjolras says. “I really do like your artwork.”

“You know absolutely nothing about art if you think this shit is good.”

“I don’t know why you keep denying that this is good. Jehan told me that you had artwork in a local gallery—obviously you have skill.”

He hates this. He hates having someone try to force-feed him false compliments. “Will you drop it?” Grantaire says.

“Are you going to admit that you have real talent?” Enjolras asks. “No? Then I’m not going to drop it. I’m not going to sit around and listen to you denigrate yourself when you have real a real talent that a lot of people are envious of.”

Something about that—something about the idea that anyone would have cause to be jealous of him—makes him snap. He rips the page out of his sketchbook and tears it to pieces, letting the pieces fall to the ground at his feet. “This? This is shit and that’s all it’ll ever be and instead of trying to convince people of talents they don’t have, why don’t you mind your own fucking business for a change?”

Silence resonates in the room and Grantaire is keenly aware that his display has garnered their attention.

“Sorry,” Enjolras says awkwardly. “I didn’t—”

“It’s fine,” he says. “It really wasn’t good to begin with. Just drop it, okay?”

“Yeah,” Enjolras says. “I’ll just… I’ll leave you to it, then.”

He pushes himself up from the chair and seeks out Feuilly for conversation. Grantaire fights the urge to find a lighter and just torch his entire sketch book.

He glowers at the crowd gathered in the room, as though daring any of them to intrude. Eponine gives him a conflicted look—part sadness, part frustration—before turning back to her conversation with Combeferre.

In the end, it’s Jehan who’s brave enough to approach him. Without a word, Jehan bends down to pick up the scraps of Grantaire’s sketches. He doesn’t make a big deal of it or try to offer them back to Grantaire, he just tucks them into his poetry notebook, as though those meager scraps were something worth keeping.

Somehow, that makes him feel worse.

“How are you feeling?” Jehan asks quietly, taking the seat next to him.

“I should be asking you that,” he says.

Jehan tilts his head a little. “What do you mean?”

“I’m depressed, not blind,” he says. “Unless you’ve got Courf doting on you, you’ve barely smiled in days.”

Jehan ducks his head. “Am I that obvious?”

“Obvious enough that I worry about you.”

“You don’t need to worry,” he says, placing a hand on his wrist and giving it a little squeeze. “I’d rather you focus on yourself right now. You’ve got to take care of yourself before you can take care of someone else.”

“I don’t need to be taken care of.”

“Everyone needs to be taken care of,” Jehan says. “You’re no exception, even if you think you don’t deserve it. And I’d much rather you focus on taking care of yourself right now than let your worry for me drive you to something you’d rather not do.”

“My self-control isn’t that awful,” he says. Who’s he kidding? Of course it is.

“I would hate to be what sets you over the edge,” Jehan says. “It’d make me feel bad, so by taking care of yourself and making sure it doesn’t come to that, you’re taking care of me. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like you’re too clever for your own good by far.”

Jehan gives him a fleeting smile.

Grantaire nudges Jehan’s knee with his own. “I’ve missed that smile,” he says. “Things okay with you and Montparnasse?”

Jehan starts massaging one hand with the other, then stops as though he doesn’t want to Grantaire to notice. “Things have been…rough,” he says. “Mont is…Mont’s dealing with a lot of shit right now. We’ve talked about it. I just…I need to be patient with him right now. He’s not acting like himself.”

“How so?”

Jehan shakes his head. “I’d rather not betray all his secrets, if it’s all the same.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t expect you to.” He studies Jehan’s face closely. He’s drawn it enough times that he’s intimately familiar with all of Jehan’s expressions and he can’t help but notice the tightness around his eyes and the slight frown lines that frame his mouth. “If you ever want to talk, just let me know, okay? A wise man once told me that if you want to take care of other people, you need to take care of yourself first, and if Montparnasse needs a caretaker right now instead of a boyfriend, you need to be sure that you’re being taken care of too.”

His smile lasts a little longer this time, and Grantaire feels a little bit of his self-loathing slip away. If nothing else, he’s still a good friend to Jehan. He can still do that. Jehan rests his head against his shoulder. “I can always count on you,” he says. “I promise you’ll be the first to know if I need any help.”

“Good,” he says. “I’m holding you to that.”

“I’d expect nothing else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for reading and being awesome. Your comments/kudos/support/general awesomeness never fails to brighten my day. I love you all.
> 
> In other news, I will be taking a posting hiatus next week. I've got the week off of work and need to use the time to deep clean and declutter my apartment. I'm moving across the country in about a month and a half and my apartment is in need of some serious attention. ~~But regular posting will resume on April 22.~~
> 
> Edit: Apparently I'm incapable of reading a calendar properly. Posting will resume this Tuesday, April 15.


	43. Chapter Forty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan finishes his final exams early and plans on having a quiet night in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: non-graphic dub-con (the non-graphic referring to the sex bits and not to the dubiousness of the consent bits) and violence

Jehan finishes his last exam on Thursday afternoon and promptly returns home, wanting nothing more than an hour or two of sleep on the couch. Between finals, the tension in his relationship, and the anxiety that the holidays always bring, he’s been having trouble sleeping, and when he arrives home, the apartment is empty—although a bit of a mess—and Jehan takes advantage of the stillness and silence of his apartment and stretches out on the couch. He’s asleep within minutes.

When he wakes up, the sun has set and his head is cradled in Mont’s lap. The only light in the apartment comes from the TV. Mont’s watching one of his crime dramas. (Jehan has always been amused by Mont’s penchant for crime dramas considering that he’s been living a life of crime since he was a teenager.) He sighs and stretches a little before rolling onto his side so he can better see the TV. He’s fond of these shows despite their insanely formulaic plots.

Mont hums a little and teases his fingers through Jehan’s hair. “It’s about time you woke up,” he says. “I was beginning to think you were dead.”

“Dead tired, maybe,” he says. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“I’ve noticed. You’ve been keeping me up with all your tossing and turning.”

“Sorry,” he says. “You should have told me—I didn’t mean to keep you up, I could have slept on the couch.”

 “I like having you in my bed,” he says. “Even if you are a squirmy little bastard.”

“Maybe I’ll take a meltonin pill before bed tonight or something.”

“Might help if you didn’t spend the whole day laying about,” Mont says off-handedly.

“I was on campus at six to study for my last final,” he says. “I didn't get back till after noon. I’ve hardly been laying about all day.”

“And yet the apartment’s a mess. You usually keep up on that better.”

“It’s because of finals week,” he says. “I’ve been busy.”

“And before that it was all those papers you had to write, and before that it was because you were sore—I’m not looking for your excuses, bird,” he says. He swats at Jehan’s ass, though the move is more forceful rather than teasing like it normally is. “Let’s just do a better job of cleaning, yeah? We hardly have any clean dishes left.”

Jehan bites back a retort that Mont’s just capable of doing the dishes as he is. He’s been trying to be more understanding and more patient with Mont, trying his best to be supportive and respectful of Mont’s needs right now because despite the fact that Mont says he’s not bothered by the fact that he saw someone die, his behavior says differently. So Jehan plays the peacekeeper even though Mont has been moody and demanding, but in all honesty peacekeeping a role that comes naturally to him. He doesn’t like contention and if being a little more pliant and flexible is what it takes to keep peace in his home right now, then that’s what he’ll do. “I can do that now,” he says, moving to get off the couch.

But Mont takes him by the shoulder and pulls him back. “I like you where you are right now,” he says. “The dishes have waited this long—they can wait a little longer.”

Mont rearranges them so that Jehan is between his legs, his back against Mont's chest. Mont presses a kiss to the back of his neck and then turns his attention back to the TV show.

Half-way through the episode, Mont’s hands start wondering. They trace idle patterns against Jehan’s arms and legs and stomach, and normally he delights in small touches like this, these little signs of nonverbal affection. But he feels himself tensing under Mont’s touch. What used to make his stomach flip with joy now makes his hands clammy, especially as Mont’s hands brush over the still-fading bruises on his chest and ribs. He doesn’t want to say that this is making him uncomfortable, he doesn’t want to bring up the fact that his body has started to associate Mont’s touch with pain. He doesn’t want to upset Mont, to remind him of something he already regrets, doesn’t want to seem like he can’t let go of the past. Besides, he tells himself, this is good for him. He’s teaching his body to remember the pleasure he used to find in Mont’s hands. He needs this. This is good.

Still, he can only endure a few more minutes of it before he puts his hands over Mont’s to still them. It’s enough to feel Mont’s palms against his stomach. It’s enough to strive to feel security when he’s wrapped up in his boyfriend’s arms like this. This is enough.

Montparnasse, though, is persistent. Jehan doesn’t think he’s doing this deliberately—surely if he had any idea of how uncomfortable Jehan was with all of this, then he’d stop—but his hands are gentle yet firm as they go back to stroking familiar patterns against his skin. One hand slips under Jehan’s shirt and he closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. This is okay. There’s no reason that this should make him feel uncomfortable.

But Mont’s hands start seeking out the spots that normally make him melt into his boyfriend’s touch—spots that when touched in just the right way send shivers of pleasure through his body, only now it’s making his stomach churn and he hates himself for not liking this. He should like this. This isn’t any different than things he and Mont have done hundreds of times before.

When Mont’s hands start fumbling with the button of Jehan’s jeans, though, Jehan puts his hand over Mont’s to still them. “Not now,” he says gently.

Mont nips at his earlobe—again, usually a sign of affection that Jehan adores, but not now. “It’s been _ages_ , bird. You’ve made me wait so long.”

Jehan swallows against the lump in his throat and moves Mont’s hands back to safer territory near his chest. “I’m exhausted,” he says. “I’m too tired right now.”

“You sound like a girl, you know that?” Mont says. “C’mon, Jehan, you won’t even have to do anything. I’ll take good care of you. Just lie back and think of England.”

Jehan shakes his head. “Not now, okay?”

“You’ve been saying that for over a week now,” he says. “It’s always _not now, Mont. Maybe later, Mont_. I’m getting sick of waiting.”

Jehan counts to ten. He doesn’t like the way his stomach is churning. He doesn’t like the way his instincts are clamoring for him to get up and get out and to do it _now_. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just…I don’t meant this as a criticism, Mont, I don’t, but I haven’t…with everything that’s happened lately, I haven’t been…I don’t feel—”

“Acting frigid’s not going to fix anything,” Mont says. “I don’t know how many times I have to fucking apologize about this before you believe me, but withholding sex isn’t going to solve our problems. It’s just going to make it worse.”

“I’m not—I’m not withholding sex, okay?” he says. His chest feels tight. Now is not a good time for panic to set in. What’s wrong with him? “I’m not trying to punish you or anything. I’m just—I’m not—”

“You’re being selfish,” Mont says. “I’m not asking for much here and it’s not like I wouldn’t be doing my damned best to make you feel good. Shit, Jehan, it’s not like I just expect you to lay there motionless while I fuck you. We can do it your way—any way you want.”

He chooses not to point out that not a minute ago Mont told him to lie back and think of England. “I want to,” he says, lying only a little because he does miss the intimacy he used to share with his boyfriend. “But not right now, okay? Tomorrow. We can try tomorrow.”

He can spend the rest of the night convincing himself that he’ll feel differently tomorrow, that tomorrow he’ll want this without any reservations.

“I miss you,” Mont says. “I miss being with you.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I miss you too—believe me, I do—but I want to feel safe when I’m with you, and I want to feel safe especially when we’re having sex, and right now I don’t. I don’t want to associate how I’m feeling now with having sex with you, okay?”

“I can make you forget,” Mont says. “I can make you forget all the stupid things I’ve done, you just have to let me, Jehan. It doesn’t have to be anything big—seriously, Jehan, just hand stuff if that’s all you want right now—but let me show you how much I love you.”

“Mont—”

“And you can show me how much you love me. You want us to get better, right?” he says. “That’s never going to happen if you don’t let me make all this shit up to you.”

“Mont, I just—”

“If you love me, you’ll let me do this for you,” he says. “I love you, bird. I want to make you feel good. You know I can make you feel so good. It’ll be like before any of this ever happened, before I lost my shit, okay? Let’s forget all about this together. You can set the pace, you can set the limits. Whatever you want. Let me love you. I want to love you.”

Part of him wants to cry though he’s not entirely sure why. Mont presses sweet kisses along the back of his neck and his shoulders.

“Don’t shut me out,” he says. “Don’t punish me for screwing up. Let me make this up to you. Let me love you. Whatever you want, Jehan, absolutely anything you want.”

When Mont’s hands drift back towards the button on his jeans, Jehan doesn’t move his hands away. He wants to be loved. He wants to forget that any of this has ever happened between them. He wants to lose himself in the sound of Mont’s voice, in the feeling of his hands against his body. So he lets Mont take off his clothes and he lets Mont touch every inch of him. Mont’s far more gentle than he normally is and with every touch, every kiss, he asks Jehan’s permission.

Testing the water, Jehan arbitrarily says no when Mont asks to suck him off and because he respects that boundary, Jehan says yes to everything else.

And when they’re done, both of them having found release in the other’s touch, Montparnasse cleans them both up and presses kisses to the fading yellow bruises on his chest and makes promises that this will be the new normal for them, this will be their life now. Jehan smiles. It’s fragile, but he feels secure. He feels safe.

He shrugs back into his clothes and kisses Mont on the mouth and then heads to the kitchen to get started on the massive pile of dishes in their sink. The dishwasher is busted again, so he clears off the counter to the left of the sink and lays down a few dish towels and gets to work. Mont is silent in the other room and the only sound in the apartment is the running water in the sink and the gentle murmur of voices on the TV.

“Hey, Jehan?” Mont calls when Jehan’s half-way through the stack of dishes.

Jehan frowns because something sounds off about Mont’s voice. “Yeah?”

“You want to tell me why someone called Courf has been sending you overly-concerned text messages for the last two weeks?”

And just like that, the feeling of peace Jehan had been so carefully been cultivating shatters. He swallows the fear—why is he afraid? Mont just spent the last hour showing him how much he loves him, he has nothing to fear—and says, “What are you talking about?”

“Your phone,” Mont says, walking into the kitchen. He’s got Jehan’s phone in one hand—it must have fallen out of his pocket while he was on the couch—and he gives it a little shake at Jehan. “What the fuck have you been telling this guy?”

“Nothing,” Jehan says. “He’s just worried.”

“He wouldn’t be worried if you hadn’t told him anything,” Mont says. “This is one of those asshole boy scouts that you’ve been dicking around with, isn’t it?”

“I swear,” Jehan says, “I haven’t told him anything, okay? He just thinks I’m stressed because of school, that’s all.”

Mont slams Jehan’s phone against the counter. “You don’t go gossiping our business to other people, you hear me?”

“Yes,” Jehan says. “I hear you, I swear. Mont, I haven’t told any of them anything. I haven’t even told Grantaire.”

“You’d better not be lying to me, you little shit.”

Jehan cringes. “I’m not. I swear, I’m not. Mont, please—”

Mont grabs him by the arm and jerks him closer. The movement is so sudden that the plate in Jehan’s hand slips out of his grip and crashes to the floor, shattering on impact. Jehan stares at it because he feels that there’s something beautiful or ironic or maybe symbolic about the shattered plate at his feet, but he can’t think of anything beyond the way his heart pounds frantically against his chest.

“Now look what you’ve done,” he snaps, shoving Jehan back. “Fuck, Jehan, when did you become so fucking useless?”

“I’m sorry,” Jehan says. “Sorry. I’ll do better. Please, I’m sorry.” He drops to his knees to pick up the fragments from the plate. Neither of them are wearing shoes and in some far off part of his mind, he can hear Joly warning him about the dangers of stepping on glass.

But apologies aren’t what Mont wants—Jehan has no idea what Mont wants anymore—and he fists his hand in Jehan’s hair. Jehan vision goes black after Mont slams his head against the side of the counter, and Jehan prays that the blackness will swallow him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends. I'm back, but unfortunately with some not-so-good news. In the last few weeks, I've had a steaming pile of "real life" dumped in my lap and in struggling to keep my head above water in all of this, my writing has really taken a hit. (Which sucks, because writing is pretty much the healthiest coping mechanism I have.) What this means is that for at least the next few weeks (or longer, if needs be) I will only be updating once a week. (BUT I promise I will absolutely without fail be updating at least once a week.)
> 
> That said, thank you all so much for your support/kudos/comments and general awesomeness. You're all super awesome and this fic--as depressing as it might be right now--is one of the bright spots in my life right now. I'm glad I can share it with you all.
> 
> Next chapter will be up by next Tuesday.


	44. Chapter Forty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras and co deal with the aftermath of Jehan's night with Mont

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for blood and mentions of self-harm

Enjolras spends the night before the last day of finals at Eponine and Grantaire’s apartment. Over the last two or three weeks, he feels he’s spent more time here than at his own apartment. He's got one final left—for a legal studies class he takes with Courf—but he’s not really worried about it and is only half-heartedly studying at the kitchen table. Mostly, he’s just enjoying the easy conversation between himself, Combeferre, Eponine, and Grantaire.

Tomorrow, after Eponine's last final, she and Combeferre are going to pick her siblings up from the group home and she's chattering about them—accompanied by snide commentary from Grantaire, who remarks about what a pain her siblings can be—when she should be studying for her abnormal psych final. Occasionally, Grantaire's comments come off a little too short or a little too harsh, but Eponine deflects his rude comments with well-practiced ease, though Enjolras does notice that she casts concerned looks at Grantaire whenever this happens, as though there is an underlying cause to his usual snark.

A knock at the door interrupts debate about what sleeping arrangement would be best for everyone and she hollers for the knocker to come in.

(In the time that he’s spent at this apartment, Enjolras has begun to realize that this is standard protocol for their apartment. Neither Grantaire nor Eponine can ever be bothered to open the door themselves and they usually just operate on an open-door policy for their friends. Enjolras can never shake the idea that it’s probably not safe to leave their door unlocked like that.)

The door knob jiggles in response to Eponine's welcome call.

“Huh,” Eponine says. “Guess someone actually locked it. Weird. R, go get the door.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “You go get it.”

She snuggles closer to Combeferre. “Can’t,” she says. “I’ve got a boyfriend to keep warm.”

Grantaire lobs a throw pillow at her but hauls himself off the couch and lumbers over to the door to answer it. When Jehan stumbles inside, Grantaire reaches out to steady him.

“Shit, Jehan,” he says. “You’re freezing. Did you walk here? It’s like twelve degrees out!”

Jehan barely registers that Grantaire has a grip on his elbow and Enjolras is a little worried about the unfocused look in his eyes. “Oh good, Ferre’s here,” he says after glancing around, his gaze landing on where Combeferre sits next to Eponine on the sofa.

“Do you need me for something, Jehan?” he asks, setting his book aside.

“I know you’re not a doctor,” Jehan says, “but I was wondering if you could take a look at something for me.”

“Sure,” he says. Combeferre and Joly both, always with the disclaimer of “I’m not a doctor yet,” have grown quite accustomed to looking at a variety of maladies among their friends.

When Jehan pulls off his hat, Enjolras feels his stomach twist. The hair above Jehan’s right ear is matted with blood, which has dripped down his ear and his neck and stains part of his scarf. Enjolras remembers that Grantaire told him once that head wounds just bleed a lot, but he doesn’t find that at all comforting at the moment.

Combeferre is on his feet in an instant.

“Shit,” Grantaire breathes. Enjolras quickly vacates his seat at the kitchen table so Jehan can sit down.

“It’s not that bad,” Jehan says.

“Not that bad?” Grantaire echoes, moving aside so Combeferre can get a closer look at the injury. “Not that bad is a papercut, Jehan, not whatever the hell this is.”

“There’s too much blood,” Combeferre says. “I can’t see—Enj, could you—I need something to clean him up—”

“I’m on it,” Enjolras says, already halfway to the kitchen to get some wet washcloths. No. Paper towels. Paper towels will be more sanitary and that’s important with open wounds. He runs a couple paper towels under the faucet and rings them out and then grabs the entire roll of dry towels, just for good measure.

“What happened, Jehan?” Grantaire asks. He’s crouched in front of Jehan while Combeferre has pulled up a chair to his side. Enjolras hands the paper towels to Combeferre, who starts mopping up the mess of blood. Enjolras pulls out his phone and starts searching for symptoms and treatments for concussions. He’s sure Combeferre knows all this already, but he needs to feel that he’s doing something useful.

“I slipped,” Jehan says. “There was water on the kitchen floor. I didn’t know. It was wet, and I slipped. I hit my head.”

“Jehan,” Eponine says slowly, her voice cold, “did Montparnasse do this to you?”

Jehan turns quickly to look at Eponine and he reels a little like it made his head spin.

“I need you to stay still,” Combeferre says gently.

“No, Mont didn’t do this,” Jehan says. “I slipped. I said I slipped.”

“Did Parnasse _help_ you slip?” she asks.

“Ep, drop it,” Grantaire says. “You’re not helping.”

“No, no,” Jehan says. “Mont wasn’t home. I was by myself. I was doing the dishes. The floor was wet.”

Grantaire takes one of Jehan’s hands and starts rubbing it to warm it up. “Did you walk all the way here like this?”

“It seemed like the best option,” Jehan says.

“You could have called,” Combeferre says gently, still mopping up blood. “I would have come to you.”

“Mont doesn’t like it when I have people over.”

Across the room, Eponine snorts. “You mean he beats the shit out of you if you do anything he doesn’t like.”

Jehan winces a little. “No, no. He would never—”

“Seriously, Ep, will you drop it?” Grantaire snaps.

“What? Are we going to continue pretending that this isn’t happening? Look at him, R! You know what this is!”

“Yeah, and I also know that now is not the fucking time to deal with this!”

“Please don’t shout,” Jehan says. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“I don’t know about that,” Combeferre says. “I think we should take you to the hospital. This might need stitches.”

“No no no,” Jehan says. “I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

“What other injuries are you hiding?” Eponine asks.

Grantaire gives her a dirty look.

“We might not have a choice, Jehan,” Combeferre says. “I’m worried about the way this is bleeding and we don’t have anything clean to wrap it up with.”

Grantaire sighs, his face flushing. “I’ve got some clean gauze you can use,” he says. “It’s in a first aid kit. Do you want it?”

“That would help,” Combeferre says. His voice is short and Enjolras knows from years of friendship that he’s irritated that Grantaire didn’t mention this ealier.

Grantaire squeezes Jehan’s hands one more time then goes to fetch the first aide kit. When he comes back, he hands the kit off to Enjolras, who’s acting as Combeferre’s second set of hands. Enjolras opens the kit and moves aside rubbing alcohol and band aids and—oddly enough—a few X-Acto knife blades before he finds the roll of gauze tucked away in the bottom. He moves to hand the kit back to Grantaire, but he’s across the room already, arguing with Eponine.

“We should call the police,” she says. “If he’s not going to admit he’s in trouble on his own, then we can send the police over there and they can deal with Parnasse.”

“Are you kidding me?” he says. “You know Parnasse can talk his way out of just about anything—and Jehan’s clearly going to corroborate whatever story he spins.”

“And that makes it okay?”

“No, but it’s not going to solve the problem, either! Who do you think Parnasse will take it out on if he gets hauled in?”

“I thought you were going to keep an eye out for shit like this!”

“I have been!”

“Damn good job of it you’ve been doing! He’s looked awful all month!”

“He and I talked the other day—he said he was fine!”

“Shit, R, and you believed him? How many times did your mom tell someone she was okay after your dad beat the hell out of her? How many times have _you_ lied through your teeth about what was going on at your home? You couldn’t recognize the fucking signs?”

“What did you expect me to do, Eponine? Demand a fucking strip search so I could look for bruises? He didn’t want us to know!”

“Who cares if he wanted us to know or not? He’s hurt—he’s been hurt—and you were supposed to take care of him!”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre says, pulling his attention away from the argument carrying on in the living room. “I need you to grab a trash can for me. I need some place to put the bloodied paper towels.”

Enjolras hurries to get the trash can out of the kitchen, but he can’t pull his attention away from Grantaire and Eponine.

“I’m not a fucking superhero!” Grantaire snaps. “I can’t do this all on my own! I can’t help him if he doesn’t want to be helped!”

“Do you even hear yourself? I don’t want your excuses! You’ve been so damned preoccupied with your own stupid shit that you’ve let this happen to your _best friend._ ”

“Do you think I wanted this to happen?”

Enjolras sets the trash can next to Combeferre and helps him hold Jehan’s hair aside as he tries to clean up the mess.

“I didn’t mean to upset them,” Jehan says quietly.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Enjolras says.

“I’m glad you came to me when you did,” Combeferre says.

“Stop making excuses!” Eponine shouts. “If it weren’t for your pathetic attempts to sober up, you could have kept a better eye on him! You could have caught it before it got this far if you weren’t such a fucking drunk!”

Eponine looks sick as soon as the words are out of her mouth and Grantaire looks like someone hit him.

“Fuck you,” he growls, grabbing a hoodie as he storms out of the apartment.

Immediately, Jehan moves to go after him, but Combeferre and Enjolras both gently hold him back.

“You need to stay put right now,” Combeferre says.

Eponine collapses on the couch, looking ashen.

“Oh, shit, I shouldn’t have said that,” she says. She looks like she’s about to cry. “He’s been doing so well, but he’s struggling and I shouldn’t have—”

Enjolras trades a quick glance with Combeferre. “Will you be okay here? I can go after him,” he says, grabbing his coat off the back of a chair.

“Go,” Combeferre says.

“Thank you,” Eponine says quietly.

“Take some gloves,” Combeferre says. “The last thing we need now is you getting frostbite.”

Coat, gloves, and scarf in hand, Enjolras hurries out of the apartment. He nearly trips over himself trying to shrug into the coat while he runs down the stairs—he never realized that Grantaire could move this fast—and he’s shoving his hands into his gloves when he reaches the street and sees Grantaire at the end of the block.

“Grantaire,” he calls. “Wait up!”

Grantaire casts him a dark look over his shoulder. “Piss off,” he says.

Which is considerably better than the “fuck off” Enjolras was expecting. He quickens his pace so he can catch up. He grabs a hold of Grantaire’s sleeve and tugs him back.

Grantaire jerks away. “Leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras says snidely. “I’m not about to let one of my friends wander around New York City in the middle of winter in nothing more than a threadbare hoodie!”

“My shriveled heart is enough to keep me warm.”

Enjolras grabs hold of his arm this time. “Come on, Grantaire. Let’s go back to your place.”

“Why? Do you and Combeferre want to yell at me too?”  The closest lamp post casts shadows over Grantaire’s face but it’s not to hide the devastation on his face.

“No, because it’s freezing cold out here and I doubt Jehan should be worrying about you when he probably has a concussion.”

“I doubt he or Eponine want anything to do with me right now.”

“You’re being ridiculous. Let’s go,” he says, tugging Grantaire back towards his apartment building.

“Why? She was right. None of this would have happened if I weren’t such a colossal fuck up.”

“You’re not—”

Grantaire jerks away from him. “Don’t lie to me! Don’t pretend I’m something I’m not! If it weren’t for me, my best friend wouldn’t need his head stitched back together right now! So if you don’t mind, I’m going to go get so shit-faced that I don’t have to worry about this anymore!”

“This isn’t about you, Grantaire,” Enjolras snaps. “This isn’t about your problems. Jehan needs you right now and all you can think about is getting wasted!”

“Oh, fuck you,” he says, turning his back on Enjolras and retreating. “Fuck you and fuck your holier-than-thou pretentious attitude.”

“Eponine said you were trying to sober up,” Enjolras calls at Grantaire’s retreating back. “I know you’ve still been drinking but how long has it been since you last got drunk?”

“Five weeks, four days.”

“And you’re just going to throw all that progress away?”

Grantaire spins back around. “You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“I. Am. A. Fuck up,” he says, breathing heavily between each word. “I poison everything I touch! I’m surprised Jehan lasted as long as he did with me as his best friend.”

“Do you think he cares about that? It’s obvious to everyone that he loves you.”

 “Yeah, well, people who love me usually end up dead,” he says. “They’re all better off without me. He’d be better off without me.”

“Oh yeah? Because it seems to me that he needs every friend he can get right now.”

“You don’t get it—he never would have met Parnasse without me! He never would have climbed into bed with him if I hadn’t told him to fucking go for it! And now he’s stuck in a relationship with a fucking psychopath because I. Fucked. Up.”

“Grantaire, you can’t blame yourself for something that someone else did,” Enjolras says. “So you introduced them to each other—no one knew that the relationship would turn out like this.”

“Oh, like that matters. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go get drunk before I you’re your life too.”

“You haven’t ruined anyone’s life!”

Grantaire laughs. It’s an absolutely soulless sound. “I’ve ruined all their lives, just like I’ve ruined my own.”

“Grantaire, listen to me—”

“No,” he shouts. He strides back to Enjolras, pulling up his sleeves as he goes. He bares his forearms to Enjolras as he shouts. “Look! Look at this! I can’t even keep myself together! I’m nothing but a burden on my friends, those unfortunate souls, so don’t you fucking tell me that I haven’t screwed this all up!”

Grantaire’s forearms are a map of thin white scars. Some of them are neat and tidy, stacked up in neat little rows. Others are jagged and puckered. The X-Acto knife blades and rubbing alcohol he saw in the first aide kit suddenly make much more sense.

“Do you see this?” Grantaire shouts again when Enjolras doesn’t—can’t—say anything. “I’m a fucking mess, a walking disaster. Grantaire can’t handle his fucking daddy issues so he cuts up his wrist like a thirteen year old girl. And when that doesn’t work, he drowns his fucking problems in booze, so if you don’t mind—”

Enjolras closes his hands overtop of Grantaire’s forearms. “Let’s go back to my place,” he says.

His request completely disarms Grantaire. “What?”

“Let’s call a cab,” he says. “And we’ll go back to my place. Neither Combeferre or I are heavy drinkers, so I don’t think there’s anything there that would tempt you. We can go back together and we can wait this out. You’ve been so strong so far. Don’t let that go to waste, Grantaire.”

Grantaire’s eyes are overbright. “But I’m not strong,” he says. “I can’t do it. You don’t—”

“We’ll do this together,” Enjolras says. “Trust me. I won’t let you fall.”

Grantaire seems to wilt, like he’s lost all the fight in him, but he allows Enjolras to hail them a cab and he doesn’t protest when Enjolras bundles him into the cab. He pulls out his phone and sends Combeferre a message.

**Enjolras:** _Taking R back to our place. I’ll call when I can. Let me know if you have to take Jehan to the hospital._

When they reach his apartment building, he takes Grantaire by the hand and leads him upstairs to his apartment. Being inside seems to bring some life back to Grantaire and as Enjolras sheds his coat and scarf and gloves, Grantaire slowly circles around like he’s trying to soak in as many details of the apartment as he can.

Enjolras takes a deep breath.  “Talk to me,” he says. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

“You’re wasting your time.” His voice is flat.

“Helping my friends battle their demons is never a waste of my time.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “I can’t run from this forever. I’m going to slip up eventually. I’ll just disappoint you more when I do.”

“You’re stronger than you think you are,” he says. “Do you want some coffee? Or something to eat, maybe?”

“I don’t need anything,” he says in a small voice. “Hell, I shouldn’t even be here. I shouldn’t be wasting your time. You’ve got more important things to do, I’m sure you do. You’ve got the world to save—you shouldn’t be wasting time with a worthless drunk.”

As he speaks, he wraps his right hand around his left wrist and digs his nails against the skin hard enough that Enjolras worries he’ll make himself bleed.

“Hey now,” he says gently, pulling his hand away from his wrist. “You don’t need to do that.”

Grantaire jerks away like Enjolras has burned him. “You don’t understand—I drink to keep from cutting and I cut to keep from drinking. I’m nothing more than a spin cycle of maladaptive coping mechanisms. I need to do one or the other.”

Enjolras shakes his head. “Whatever you’re running from can’t get to you here. I’ll be with you the entire time. You’re not alone in this, Grantaire. If you’re not strong enough to do this on your own, then you have me and my strength for as long as you need.”

When he reaches out to touch Grantaire, he doesn’t pull away this time and Enjolras steers him towards the living room and he sits Grantaire down on the couch. He’s grateful to find an old notebook and a few mechanical pencils on the coffee table because he wants to give Grantaire something to do with his hands but he didn’t want to leave Grantaire alone while he searched for something he could draw with. He flips the notebook open to a blank page and sets it on Grantaire’s lap.

“Draw me something,” he says. “You can’t cut and you can’t drink if your hands are busy.”

“Beer hat,” Grantaire says. He stares at the blank page as Enjolras puts a pencil in his hand. “I don’t need hands to drink if I have a beer hat.”

“And you think Combeferre or I have a beer hat laying around here somewhere?”

“I have nothing to draw.”

“Draw me a picture of Jehan,” he says, hoping that focusing on Jehan will remind him of why he’s trying to sober up in the first place.

“Drawing pretty pictures isn’t going to make this shit go away,” he says. “It never does.”

Despite his cynicism, he starts to draw anyway. Enjolras watches his hand move across the page and he thinks it might be a little ironic that Grantaire’s hands can cause so much self-destruction can also create such beauty.

“I know this won’t make it go away,” he says. “But sometimes the best you can hope for is a distraction to ride out the urges.”

“Oh yeah? And what does Captain Sobriety know about any of this?”

Enjolras hesitates for a moment and licks his lips before he speaks. “My mother’s an addict,” he says. “Has been since I was young.”

“Oh,” Grantaire says.

“Prescription drugs are her poison of choice,” Enjolras says. “My father…he’s not very loving, and I think it was easier for her to bury everything in prescriptions rather than deal with any abandonment issues she felt from my father. Every couple of years, she’d try to quit. Or she’d say she was trying to quit—it was usually after I’d gotten in trouble in school or after she’d nearly overdose—something would scare her into trying to quit. And I was always so thrilled when she told me she was going to give it all up. I always hoped that she’d get clean and I’d do everything I could for her—I threw out her pills, I sat with her during withdraw, I held her hair back as she puked.

“She could only ever make it a week or two at the most. Then something would upset her—usually something my father would say—and we were right back to square one. She never had a reason to quit that was stronger than her reason than her reason to get high.” He doesn’t mention the resentment that he feels guilty for having because _he_ wasn’t a good enough reason for his mother to quit, doesn’t mention how much that scarred him as a child. His mother loves her drugs more than she loves him. “I know you don’t think you’re strong, but lasting this long takes strength. I know it does. And maybe you’re not out of the forest yet, but maybe all you need is someone to walk with you and show you the way.”

“I didn’t know about your mom,” he says.

“I’m not close to either of my parents,” he says. “It’s just not something I talk about.”

“Is that why you’ve always been such a hardass about my drinking?” He doesn’t look up from the notebook.

“I’ve just seen first-hand what that kind of addiction can do to people—and the people they’re close to—and I don’t like it. I can’t just…sit by and watch people ruin their lives like that.”

Grantaire is still sketching and Enjolras can see the form of his own face start to take shape. “You were my reason,” he says softly after a moment of silence between them.

“What?”

“I’ve tried to give all of this up before,” he says. “But I’d always slip up, always give into the urges, but you made me want to try harder. After…after my birthday party—I mean, it was all Jehan’s idea and I told him I’d cut back and everything with him and for him, but it was always for you. Always trying to be better for you. It was…I don’t know…I guess I thought you wouldn’t have yelled at me if you didn’t care at least a little and maybe if you saw something more in me, then maybe there was actually something there. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

Enjolras’s chest suddenly feels tight because his mother didn’t care enough about him to quit, but somehow he is enough to give Grantaire the strength to quit? This isn’t the first time that Grantaire has shown remarkable faith in him. It doesn’t make sense, but still he licks his lips and says, “I’m happy I could help.”

Grantaire nods and they lapse into silence. Enjolras watches him  draw, watches his own face materialize on paper, and he wonders at the confidence with which Grantaire draws him—as though he’s been the subject of plenty of Grantaire’s art before.

After a few minutes of silence, Grantaire speaks. “Say something,” he says.

Enjolras starts. “What?”

“Keep talking,” he says, sounding uncertain of himself. “Please. I can’t—I don’t do well in silence.”

“Right,” Enjolras says. “Of course.” So he starts talking about whatever comes to mind, starting with the work he and Professor LaMarque are doing to appeal the school administration’s vote on the housing issue for transgender students. There’s not too much they can do right now, since it’s the end of the semester and the administrative board has  adjourned until the next semester, but Enjolras hopes that they’ll be able to get the matter sorted out by the beginning of the next semester.  From there he talks about any of a half  dozen other pet projects that he wants too get taken care of at the school before he graduates. He’s most likely going to be doing his graduate work here, so he’s still got a few years to get this all taken care of, but he knows his list of problems to fix will only ever get larger.

After while, he drifts towards more personal territory. He knows a lot of people accuse him of caring about causes more than he cares about people, and he’s self-aware enough to know that sometimes that is the case, but he really does care about his friends and the concern he feels for them and how grateful he is for them. “Everyone thinks I’m some sort of silver-tongued leader,” he says, “like I’m the heart and soul of everything I’ve tried to do, but really I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the rest of you. I’m kind of shit at showing it, but you’re important to me.”

As with everything else he’s said tonight, Grantaire doesn’t have a response for him.

It’s just after three in the morning when Grantaire practically collapses against him. Enjolras had been in the middle of explaining why first past the post voting is inherently flawed and why they should have switched to an alternative voting system decades ago when Grantaire sags against his shoulder, the tension gone from his body and exhaustion on his face.

“Grantaire?” he says.

“My hand hurts,” he mumbles, eyelids drooping. This doesn’t surprise Enjolras, considering Grantaire has been drawing almost non-stop this entire time.

He hopes the worst has passed. “Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” he asks. Sleep always helped his mom. She was always stronger in the morning.

Grantaire nods against him, and when Enjolras tries to move out from underneath him, Grantaire’s hand fists in his shirt.

“Please don’t leave me” he says. His voice is small, like a child’s.

Enjolras adjusts so he’s in a more comfortable position and allows Grantaire to snuggle up against him, not unlike the way Courferyac had snuggled against him any number of times since they became friends. “I’m right here as long as you need me,” he says, patting Grantaire’s head in a way he hopes is comforting rather than awkward.

Grantaire falls asleep in a matter of moments—and Enjolras manages to send Combeferre a lengthy text filling him before he follows suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so very, very much for the good thoughts and well-wishes that have been sent my way this last week. You all have no idea how much your gentle encouragement lifts my heart these days :) 
> 
> Next chapter will be up next Tuesday :)
> 
> (Also, apologies for weird typos and the like. I wrote part of this chapter in the middle of the night in the dark with my glasses off--yay for insomnia! (not)--and I tried to do a good job combing through for errors, but with as exhausted as I am right now, it's very possible that I missed some of them.)


	45. Chapter Forty-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Courfeyrac tries very very hard not to turn into a giant squid of anger in light of recent developments

Courfeyrac had been planning to stop by Eponine and Grantaire’s apartment when he finished his penultimate final. He has one more scheduled for Friday morning and he was planning on studying with Enjolras, who seemed to have taken up semi-permanent residence at Eponine and Grantaire’s place. When he arrives, though, Enjolras and Grantaire are both absent—and while normally this would be a cause for celebratory smirking because as far as he’s concerned the more time those two spend alone together, the better—but Jehan is there in their place and Combeferre is very clearly patching him up.

Patching his head up.

His head. [  
](http://www.foh.dhhs.gov/NYCU/domesticviolence2.asp)

Which is bleeding.

And when Courfeyrac sees it, all he can see for the moment is red and he’s practically shaking he’s so angry because he wants to hunt down Jehan’s fucking boyfriend and absolutely murder him.

But instead he stays and he holds Jehan’s hand while Combeferre secures a bandage around it and he doesn’t argue when Jehan tells him that he just slipped and fell even though he knows Jehan is lying. Combeferre is worried about the possibility of a concussion, so while it’s clear that Jehan needs some rest—from the stiff way he moves, Courfeyrac suspects that far more of him is hurt than just his head—they do their best to keep him up and occasionally pepper him with questions to see that he’s still thinking straight.

Jehan makes them promise that they won’t take him to the hospital—Courfeyrac can see how much Eponine wants to refuse this promise—and Combeferre assures him that as long as he doesn’t get any worse, they’ll let him stay here tonight.

After two Disney movies—which were light and happy but did very little to dissipate the tense atmosphere of the apartment—Combeferre is confident enough that Jehan’s not concussed and Eponine ushers Jehan off to bed. While they’re gone, Courfeyrac and Combeferre take the opportunity to talk.

“Are you okay?” Combeferre asks. He’s managed to wash all the blood off his hands, but some of it still stains his shirt. Courfeyrac has a hard time taking his eyes off it.

He shakes his head. “I’m worried and I’m pissed as hell. How did we miss this?”

“We didn’t miss anything,” Combeferre says. “We’ve been worried about him for a while, but none of us had any evidence that things had gotten this bad.”

“The signs were all there. Why didn’t we—”

“Courf, beating yourself up because you didn’t do something sooner isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Combeferre says, sighing a little. “We can’t change what’s already happened. It’s more important to figure out what we should do now.”

“Oh, are we having a war council?” Eponine asks, coming back into the living room. She collapses on the couch and snuggles next to Combeferre, seemingly unaware of the blood on his shirt.

“Did you get Jehan settled in?” Courfeyrac asks.

“He’s already asleep,” she says. “I put him in R’s room. I thought he might find it more comforting. But really, are we talking about how we should kill Montparnasse? Because we should. Talk about it, I mean. And kill him. We should do both.”

“We can’t kill him,” Combeferre says. “However much we might like to.”

Eponine frowns. “Normally I’d say that Jehan could stay here as long as he needs to, but he can’t now,” she says. “Not with Azelma and Gavroche coming tomorrow. We just don’t have the room. You and Enjolras have that spare room, right?” she asks Combeferre.

“Yeah,” he says. “Enj is there now with Grantaire. They can get the room set up tonight.”

Courfeyrac looks between the two of them and sighs. “I hate this,” he says, “And I hate to be the one to say this, but we can’t force Jehan to leave that asshole.”

“Like hell we can’t,” Eponine says. “Domestic abuse always ends in one of two ways—either the victim leaves or he ends up dead. Those are our options.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Courfeyrac says. “I want him out of that house and I want that monster he calls a boyfriend behind bars, but we can’t make him do this. This has to be his own choice.”

“Do you even know how much of an ass you sound like right now?” Eponine says. “Jehan’s clearly not thinking straight, so you just want to leave him at the mercy of Montparnasshole? Jehan’s not strong enough to leave on his own. As his friends, we should be doing everything we can to get him out of there.”

“As his friends,” Courfeyrac says, “we should be doing our best to support him—and that means helping him make that choice for himself.”

“Shit, Courf,” she says. “He’s not going to make that choice. And even if he did, Parnasse isn’t going to let him go. Jehan is our friend and it’s our responsibility to help him if he won’t do it himself. I’m not going to sit back and watch Montparnasse kill him!”

“And you think that’s what I want? Do you think that seeing him like this tonight didn’t feel like someone was ripping my heart right out of my chest?”

“Courf,” Combeferre says.

“It’s not like I like this,” he snaps. “It’s not like I want us to sit around and pop popcorn while we watch Montparnasse brutalize him, but this has to be Jehan’s decision—beginning and end of story. He’ll hate us for swooping in and forcing him to leave.”

“Check yourself,” Eponine snaps. “This isn’t about you and this isn’t about making sure that you don’t ruin your chances with Jehan. This is about keeping him the fuck alive.”

“And what’s supposed to keep him from going back if we make him leave? Forcing him isn’t going to solve this! Jehan has the right to make this choice for himself. Trust me. We’ll only drive him away if we force him.”

Combeferre puts his hand on Eponine’s knee before she can say anything more. “This isn’t Richard, Courf,” he says, so gently that it only barely takes the sting out of his words. “Montparnasse is doing a lot more damage than that man ever did to you.”

Courfeyrac drags his hand through his hair. “You think I don’t know that? Shit, Ferre, I just need you to trust me on this one. I’ve talked to Jehan and right now, he still loves Montparnasse, and if we gang up on his boyfriend, he’s going to pull back—and the last thing he needs now is to be pulling back. If he’s not ready to leave, then he’s not going to leave. He already has one man in his life trying to control him, he doesn’t need the rest of us joining in.”

“That’s true,” Combeferre says slowly, “but Eponine is also right. Jehan is in real danger right now, Courf. I would rather have Jehan hate me and be safe than risk the alternative.”

“You would take her side.”

“This isn’t about taking sides,” Combeferre says. There’s only a shade of irritation in his voice. “This is about helping Jehan.”

“Which is what I’m trying to do!”

Combeferre and Eponine exchange a look and then Combeferre says, “Don’t you think you might be a little too close to the situation to see it clearly?”

“Don’t you think I know Jehan better than you do? Fuck, Ferre, don’t you think I’d save him from all of this in a fucking heartbeat if I thought it’d help? This has to be his decision!”

“I know you think that’s best right now, Courf,” Combeferre says. His voice is calm and even and Courfeyrac doesn’t know he does it, because right now he still wants to hit something. “But surely you can understand why we may not agree with that course of action. We all just want what’s best—and safest—for him right now.”

“What’s best is giving him back some control over his own life and letting him realize all this on his own. Why don’t you realize that?”

“Courf—”

But Courfeyrac gets to his feet and shakes his head. “I can’t do this right now,” he says. If he stays, he and Combeferre will only end up arguing. He’s too on edge right now, torn between his heart, which wants to steal Jehan away from all of this and make sure that nothing bad ever happens to him ever again, and his head, which knows that the very best thing he can do for Jehan right now is to be calm and gentle and supportive and help him take control of his life and make his own decisions. He doesn’t want to fight with Ferre when he’s already feeling like this. “I’m going to go check on Jehan.”

Courfeyrac end up spendingthe night in Grantaire’s room with Jehan, but he doesn’t sleep. He pullsthechair from Grantaire’s desk up to the bedand sits at Jehan’s side with his textbook in his lap and his notes spread out alongside Jehan. The room is silent and he distracts himself from his anger and his concern and his guilt with the cold and clinical words of his textbook. He’s spent the last weekor so pouring over websites about helping friends in abusive relationships because he didn’t know what else to do and he wanted to be prepared, and they all say the same thing: you cannot force someone to leave abusive relationships. He hates it and he hates the helplessness he feels, but supporting Jehan right now is far more important than finding an outlet for his anger and his frustration. Once Jehan is safe, then they can work on getting Montparnasse locked up. Until then, Courfeyrac knows he needs to keep his temper in check so he can support Jehan through this. Around three in the morning, Combeferre comes to check on them both and he brings Courfeyrac a mug of hot chocolate. They don’t talk about their pseudo-argument—they don’t need to, not really—and Courfeyrac knows from Ferre’s gift of hot chocolate that any hard feelings between them are gone and that Combeferre will follow Courfeyrac’s lead in this matter.

That vote of confidence means a lot to him.

In a quiet voice, Combeferre fills him in about Grantaire and Enjolras. Enjolras just texted, apparently, and he’s staying the night with Grantaire, who’s struggling with the urge to drink himself into a stupor. Courfeyrac thinks that the time alone together will be good for them, even if it is under less than ideal circumstances.

Hespends the rest of the night alone at Jehan’s bedside and he’s going over his notes for the fourth time when Jehan stirs. It’s not yet six in the morning and Courfeyrac is exhausted—though reasonably well prepared for his final in an hour and a half. He’s grateful that Jehan is waking now, because he wants the chance to speak to his friend in private before he leaves.

Jehan rolls over on the bed and blinks at him a few times. “Did you stay here the whole night?” he asks.

Courfeyrac gives him a gentle smile. “I had nowhere better to be. How’re you feeling?”

“My head is fuzzy,” he says. “Hurts.”

“I imagine it does. You said it was cracked against the counter top?”

“I slipped,” Jehan says, automatically reverting to his old lie. Which is a shame, because Courfeyrac was hoping just a little that maybe Jehan would be out of it enough to come clean about what really happened. “The floor was wet.”

He nods and hesitates before speaking. He doesn’t want to start accusing Jehan of lying, but something needs to be said. He sighs. “I worry that you’re not telling us everything,” he says slowly. “And I’m not going to force you on this one way or the other, but I hope you know that if you want to talk about this now or in the future, I am always willing to listen.”

Jehan just rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Courfeyrac wants to climb on the bed and cuddle him, but he really doesn’t know how much physical contact would be appreciated at the moment.

Instead, he asks, “You don’t have any finals to take today, do you?”

“No,” Jehan says. “I finished my last one yesterday.”

“Good. I’d hate for this little…slip up to affect your grade at all.”

Silence blooms between them and Courfeyrac hates it, but he doesn’t press. He doesn’t force the conversation. He wants nothing more than to whisk Jehan away from all of this and give him a safe place to reconstruct his life, but he knows not to push it. Offer support, don’t hand down judgment. Express concern, don’t make accusations. He turns his attention back to his notes and he waits.

He hates waiting.

But it pays off.

“Mont and I argued again last night,” Jehan says quietly, still staring at the ceiling.

“Oh yeah?” he says gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Things were…I don’t know. I don’t know what things are like anymore. He…we were relaxing with each other and I felt…I thought things were okay between us again, but he got angry. Out of nowhere. He was just so angry.”

“Can I ask what he was angry about?”

Jehan is quiet for a long moment before he says, “He thinks I’m spreading lies about him. He thinks I’m telling you all things that aren’t true.”

“What happened when he got angry?” Courfeyrac asks.

“He shouted. He called me names. I…I don’t like him when he’s like that, and he’s been like that more and more often recently.”

“Were you two still arguing when you slipped and fell?” he asks.

Again, Jehan doesn’t speak while he tries to sort out what he wants to say in his head. Courfeyrac can practically see him self-edit. “We were arguing, but he didn’t—this wasn’t his fault. I slipped.”

“Okay,” Courfeyrac says. “What did he do after you fell? Ferre said that you hit your head pretty hard.”

“He just kept arguing,” Jehan says. “And when he…when he was done, he just threw a dish towel at me and told me to clean myself up before he stormed out of the apartment.”

It’s not a stretch to take Jehan’s half-truths and stretch them into a fully-formed scenario. Something set off Montparnasse and they argued. When Jehan says he slipped, what he really means is that Montparnasse hurt him—shoved him or hit him or somehow knocked his head against the counter, and when he says that Montparnasse kept arguing, he’s saying that Montparnasse just kept on hitting before throwing a dish towel (a fucking dish towel) at him and leaving him to fend for himself.

“Well, I’m glad that Combeferre was here to look after you,” Courfeyrac says. “We were all pretty worried about you last night.”

“Sorry,” Jehan says. “I didn’t meanto make anyone worry.”

“It’s no problem,” he says. He fishes his keys out of his jeans pocket. “Hey, Jehan?”

Jehan turns to look at him and Courfeyrac takes his apartment key off his key ring. He hands it to Jehan, who just looks at it skeptically.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“It’s a key to my place,” he says. “I know things with you and Montparnasse are…difficult right now, and I want you to know that you are always welcome at my place, okay? If you two are arguing and you don’t feel safe, or even if you just want a quiet place to compose yourself, my apartment is always open to you. I live alone, so you don’t have to worry about roommates, and I have a pull-out couch if you ever want to stay the night. I just want you to know that you always have the option of coming to my place if your home doesn’t feel safe enough for you.”

Jehan stares down at the key in his hand before wrapping his fingers around it. “Thanks,” he says.

“I’m here for whatever you need me for, Jehan. If you need a place to stay or just someone to talk to, I’m here.”

* * *

 

Every year, Les Amis d’ABC helps host a fundraiser dinner party for the children’s hospital, and it is, without a doubt, Courfeyrac’s favorite event of the year. It always takes place on the Saturday after finals and it’s a formal event—which they rarely do—and they host it alongside a few other charity-minded groups on campus. (Including a rather narrow-minded conservative religious group made up of people that normally Courfeyrac can’t stand, but he likes working with them for the hospital fundraiser. He likes being reminded—and reminding them in turn—that they’re not all that different and that staunch and opposing opinions on a handful of social issues don’t have to make them mortal enemies.)

The party is already in full swing. The formal sit-down dinner—plates are at a high enough cost that this fundraiser usually brings in some of New York’s elite—has passed and now it’s something of a dance party alongside a light, open buffet. Ticket prices for this half of the event are still pricey, but not so much that average people—and average students—can’t afford to attend.

He and Enjolras and Combeferre and Eponine were all in attendance for the formal dinner, and now that the less-formal part of the evening has started, more of their friends are starting to arrive. They drift in in small groups and clusters. Cosette and Marius—Marius can’t keep his eyes off Cosette long enough to watch where he’s going and he keeps tripping over his feet. Bossuet and Joly and Musichetta, all wearing color coordinating clothes so that they look like a matching set. Bahorel and Feuilly arrive with Azelma and Gavroche, who moved into Eponine’s apartment the night before and who Bahorel and Feuilly “babysat” (ie played video games with) during the formal dinner.

He’s sitting at an empty table with Enjolras, both of them picking absently at a plate of hors d’ouevers while their friends make merry on the dance floor, when Grantaire and Jehan arrive.

With Montparnasse.

Enjolras spots them first and it’s his soft swearing that gets Courfeyrac to look over his shoulder. Jehan looks…well, he’s smiling. That counts for something. And he’s got a bit more color in his face than he did on Friday morning. Unfortunately, some of that color comes from the bruise that creeps out from under his hairline on the right side of his face. He’s wearing slacks and a brightly colored button-up shirt and a pull-over sweater that clashes horribly with the shirt—but the look is a happy medium between Jehan’s normal apparel and his formal suit from Thanksgiving. Montparnasse, who holds hands with Jehan as though those hands didn’t beat the younger man two nights ago, is wearing a black suit and a white shirt with no tie and somehow he looks like he fits in with this crowd.

When Courfeyrac sees him, all the anger he felt Thursday night comes flooding back.

Enjolras puts his hand over Courfeyrac’s wrist in a silent command to stay still, though he looks as angry as Courfeyrac feels.

“What the hell is he doing here?” he hisses. He knows things are bad when Enjolras has to act as a calming influence and he tries to reel in the anger but it’s so damn hard.

Enjolras shakes his head. “Jehan probably invited him.”

Jehan probably paid for both their tickets, too.

“I want him out of here,” Courfeyrac says, because he’s really not sure that he’ll be able to sit here and be polite with that walking bag of pond scum lurking around.

Combeferre and Eponine join them before Enjolras can answer.

“R texted,” Eponine says. She’s wearing a red cocktail dress that flatters her slim figure perfectly and Courfeyrac has smirked every time Combeferre adjusts his glasses while looking at her because it’s absolutely adorable. He’s having a hard time finding anything adorable now, though. “He wanted me to give you a heads up that—you already know, don’t you?”

Enjolras jerks his chin towards the door where Jehan and Montparnasse linger together. “We saw them come in together.”

Jehan leans in close to Montparnasse and smiles. It makes Courfeyrac want to be sick or want to hit something or maybe do both because thatshit excuse of a man does not deserve Jehan’s smiles. He doesn’t deserve Jehan’s warmth and light and goodness. He doesn’t deserve Jehan at all.

“I want him gone,” Courfeyrac says again. “We helped organize this thing. We can kick people out if we want to, right?”

He looks to Combeferre for an answer, but Combeferre shakes his head. “Not unless he does something out of line here. We can’t just turn away people because we don’t like them.”

“What if we turn them away because they’re lying, awful, douchebag sons of bitches?”

“I’m surprised Jehan even brought him along,” Enjolras says. “After everything that happened the other night.”

Eponine shakes her head. “Montparnasse will be on his best behavior right now,” she says. “It’s how he works.”

“Meaning what?” Courfeyrac says. “That he can make up for being an abusive asshat by being polite for a few days after?”

“It’s more than being polite,” she says. “It’s like bending over backwards to do anything you’ve ever wanted him to to ‘apologize’ for his behavior.”

Courfeyrac narrows his eyes at her. “How do you know all this?”

“Because I dated Montparnasse when I was fourteen and stupid and he got drunk at a party and hit me when I told him I wanted to leave. I broke up with him on the spot, and he spent the next two weeks trying to crawl back into my good graces and when I refused to get back together with him, he spent the week after that trying to shame me into getting back together with him—but I have a zero tolerance policy for guys who hit and my dad taught me well enough that if he’s willing to hit once, he’ll be willing to hit again.”

“So, what?” Enjolras says. “We’re just supposed to ignore the fact that we know he’s been abusing Jehan?”

“We keep an eye on them,” Combeferre says. “And if he steps out of line tonight, we kick him out.”

“And we remind Parnasse that Jehan isn’t nearly so isolated as he’d like to think he is,” Eponine says. “Grantaire and I have known Parnasse the longest, and he knows better than to fuck around with me and Grantaire has always had a certain way of dealing with him. It’s time we remind him of that.”

“I don’t like this,” Courfeyrac says. He doesn’t like this at all and he _really_ doesn’t think that he’ll be able to hold his anger in check all night while he watches that awful son of a bitch pretend to be civil to Jehan.

Enjolras gives his arm a comforting squeeze. It’s rare for Enjolras to be tactile like this, which makes Courfeyrac appreciate the gesture more. “Nor do I, but nothing is going to happen on our watch. Let’s just try to help Jehan enjoy himself tonight as much as he can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you all know you're amazing? Because you are. You're amazing and wonderful and supportive and your comments are seriously a bright spot in my week (especially since my job is surely doing its best to try to kill me right now). Thank you all so much for your support and I love you all <3
> 
> Assuming that my job doesn't kill me and that I can find time to finish my edits, the next chapter will be up on Tuesday :)
> 
> Also, since I'm a firm believer in sharing resources and since abusive relationships are frighteningly common, here's a useful link if you suspect someone you know is in an abusive relationship: <http://www.foh.dhhs.gov/NYCU/domesticviolence2.asp>[](http://www.foh.dhhs.gov/NYCU/domesticviolence2.asp)  
> (The hotlines provided in the link are US hotlines, but I think the general information is pertinent to everyone.)


	46. Chapter Forty-Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire tries to keep this party from blowing up in everyone's faces

On the scale of One to Not My Scene, this dinner-turned-dance party falls squarely on “I’d probably be more comfortable at my own funeral” for Grantaire. For one, he’s wearing a suit. A very well-made and well-tailored suit, which is an early Christmas present from Jehan. He doesn’t want to know what kind of money Jehan had to spend on this because he knows that suits are expensive and he knows that Jehan’s dad keeps him on a pretty tight financial leash.

He could, perhaps, enjoy this party more if he could swallow his discomfort with a couple of drinks, but he’s still on his one-drink-a-day plan and Enjolras has started checking up with him to make sure he’s still on that plan. Spend one night blubbering about your issues to the man, and suddenly he’s taking charge and holding the leash, and for some reason that works for Grantaire, because he really really doesn’t want to disappoint Enjolras—at least not any more than he usually does—and if Enjolras believes he can do this, then maybe he really can. Besides, he woke up Friday morning practically plastered against Enjolras’s chest because they had both fallen asleep on the couch on Thursday night, and while Grantaire doesn’t like admitting this to himself, he’d do almost anything to get that to happen again.

So he stays away from the bar and he stays close to Jehan and Montparnasse—and he’s not the only one. Grantaire isn’t sure how word got out about Jehan and Parnasse and the nature of the bruise on Jehan’s face, but he’s certain all their friends know. He doesn’t miss the way Bahorel practically flexes his muscles at Montparnasse when he comes to say hello, as though to say _fuck around with one of our own and I will seriously fuck you up._ Jehan, Grantaire is sure, is very much aware of every single undertone in all of these greetings and well-wishes, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He smiles at their friends and they all talk about how nice it feels to have the semester finally over, and throughout it all, he never lets go of Montparnasse’s hand.

Or maybe Montparnasse doesn’t let go of his hand.

After all, Montparnasse has always had an odd little possessive streak. Once he claims something—or someone, be it friend, boyfriend, or girlfriend—he can be extremely loyal…and extremely possessive. It has its perks, of course, because Montparnasse has gotten both Grantaire and Eponine out of nasty situations with their respective parents before, but possessiveness can very quickly morph into something entirely different and Grantaire isn’t comfortable with anyone treating Jehan like he’s just some object to be owned.

Grantaire knows better than to bring this up with Montparnasse, though. Especially not with Jehan around. You don’t confront abusers in front of their victims. It’s a shitty thing to do, and it puts the victim in a horrendously difficult position, and if the abuser expects that the victim has anything to do with being put on the spot, then, well…in Grantaire’s childhood home, a trip to the hospital was usually warranted after a confrontation like that.

Not to mention, it’d be awkward to bring anything up at all right now, because Montparnasse is being pleasant and attentive to the point of it being very, very weird. If Jehan so much as looks in the direction of the buffet table, Montparnasse is on his feet, offering to get Jehan whatever he wants. He handles Jehan like he’s made of glass—all soft touches and gentle words—and it’s unnerving because that’s not who Montparnasse is,and Grantaire recognizes the behavior. In the beginning, when the abuse between his parents first started getting bad, his old man had treated his mom just like this. This over-solicitous gentleness—people who didn’t know better wouldn’t think twice about it. They’d look at Jehan and Montparnasse and think _oh, what a cute couple. He’s so attentive. He’s so kind. His partner must be so lucky_ , and it’s a double-edged sword because it puts Jehan in a position where, if he were to confess the darker side of this relationship, people would be less inclined to believe him.

But Grantaire knows better and Eponine knows better. From the way everyone else acts around Jehan and Montparnasse, they all know better too.

So mostly, Grantaire plays the self-appointed chaperone and while the rest of their friends are mingling and socializing and dancing, he sits at a table with Jehan and Montparnasse, trying to maintain conversation that isn’t painfully awkward for all of them.

When a mellow waltz number strikes up, Jehan casts a longing looking at the dance floor. A couple of older couples start dancing and Grantaire spots Marius trying to lead Cosette in the world’s most awkward waltz. Poor girl, though she seems to be enjoying herself even though Marius keeps stepping on her toes.

“Mont,” Jehan says. “Do you want to dance?”

For the first time all night, Montparnasse denies Jehan. “Like that? Not a chance.”

Jehan’s smile—which has looked forced all night—wavers a little. “Please?”

Montparnasse rolls his eyes. “You know I don’t do that kind of dancing.”

Grantaire can’t stand the look on Jehan’s face, so he sets aside the Coke he’s been drinking. “C’mon, Jehan,” he says, pushing back from the table. “I’ll dance with you—if it’s okay with Parnasse, of course.”

Montparnasse nods his consent, and Grantaire wants to think it’s because Montparnasse can’t deny the earnestness on Jehan’s face, but he knows it’s more likely that Parnasse gave in only because Grantaire bothered to ask in the first place. Grantaire takes Jehan by the hand and leads onto the floor, falling into the line of dance near Marius and Cosette, who smile at them both. Grantaire had done ballroom dance in high school to fulfill his PE requirement—going to a magnet school for the arts meant that his gym credits were things like ball room dancing or a semester of stage combat, which was always preferable to spending high school gym dodging dodge balls chucked at his head—and he’s danced with Jehan on more than a few occasions, so they fall into a natural rhythm. Jehan follows his lead effortlessly and Grantaire delights in the laugh he solicits from Jehan after leading him through a series of rather intense underarm turns.

Grantaire’s not terribly surprised when Montparnasse cuts in half-way through the dance and he  hands Jehan off effortlessly and without a fuss. If Montparnasse is going to act like a jealous bastard in public, then it’s better for everyone not to call attention to it. Grantaire retreats, keeping an eye on them all the same. Parnasse is clumsy when it comes to ballroom dance and he can see Jehan struggle not to take the lead himself.

Grantaire spots Azelma lurking near a drink table and he tugs her onto the dance floor. She’d be staring at the dancers with a sort of wistful look. He twirls her around, being a bit more forceful with his lead than he was with Jehan, since she’s unfamiliar with the steps. She was normally a chatty girl—especially around her siblings—but she’d been quiet and nervous since she moved in the night before. Making her laugh is almost as satisfactory as making Jehan laugh.

“What’s going on with Parnasse and his boyfriend?” she asks as he leads her through a box twinkle. She only stumbles a little.

“What?”

“You keep looking at Parnasse and his boyfriend,” she says. “And Eponine was swearing about him earlier. I know they’re not BFFs or anything, but it’s weird for her to be that vocal about it.”

“I went to high school with the boyfriend,” he tells Azelma. He’s not surprised that she hasn’t met Jehan before, considering that Jehan grew up at the very opposite end of town and Azelma has probably been rather preoccupied with her own life. “He’s one of my best friends and Parnasse has been acting like an ass. Just…keep your distance from him, all right?”

Azelma rolls her eyes. “Parnasse has always been a creepy bastard. Not to mention, he’s old.”

Once the waltz ends, an upbeat dance number comes on and Azelma is quickly swept away by Cosette, who’s trying to start some sort of mad dance party in the middle of the floor with Musichetta. He watches Jehan and Montparnasse talk at the edge of the dance floor. From the way Jehan keeps glancing at the girls, it’s clear that he wants to join in, but Montparnasse seems reluctant. It’s another minute or so before Montparnasse relents and let’s Jehan go join the dancing by himself, and Grantaire is fairly certain that Montparnasse only permits it because the group dancing is entirely comprised of girls (except for Marius, who appears oblivious to everyone around him except Cosette). There’s a flicker of sadness on Jehan’s face as he watches Montparnasse leave, and for a moment Grantaire considers going back to the dance floor and checking in with him, but then he spots Courfeyrac on his way to the dance floor.

Courfeyrac will take good care of him.

Besides, he spots Enjolras sitting alone at a table, and with Courfeyrac looking after Jehan, Grantaire has the freedom to make use of this opportunity. He takes a seat at the table, pulling his chair closer to Enjolras as he sits.

“I didn’t know you could dance,” Enjolras says.

“I’m a man of many hidden, useless talents,” Grantaire says.

“I don’t think they’re useless.” His words are automatic, like he doesn’t know if he can stand to let anything that sounds like an insult anywhere near Grantaire, but Grantaire won’t have it.

“You don’t have to treat me like I’m made of glass,” he says. “I know I sort of…freaked out at you on Thursday night, but seriously, it’s okay to tell me that dancing is useless because it is.”

“Are you…are you doing any better now than you were on Thursday?” Enjolras asks.

“I’m fine,” he says automatically.

Enjolras raises an eyebrow.

“Worrying about Jehan has kept my own issues in check,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder to the dance floor. Courfeyrac has joined Jehan, and while neither of them are touching, it’s clear that they’re dancing together. Courfeyrac says something and Jehan laughs, looking, for a moment, legitimately carefree.

“You’ll call me if things get that bad again, won’t you?” Enjolras says. “You don’t have to do this alone and if things with Jehan get bad again, I—we’re all here for you. Both of you.”

“Thanks,” he says awkwardly. In an effort to steer the conversation onto safer grounds, he says, “So, do you have any plans for the holiday?”

“Not really. I’ll go home for Christmas, but I’ll be back here that afternoon.”

Grantaire raises his eyebrows. “That’s thrilling, that is. Go big, or go home.”

Enjolras gives him a steely look, which makes Grantaire smirk. “Well, what do you normally do on Christmas?” he asks.

“Me? Oh, I normally hang around my apartment and get drunk.”

Enjolras looks alarmed. “You’re not—you won’t—”

“Don’t worry,” he says, feeling a little self-conscious that he can’t joke about this without making Enjolras worry because joking about this shit is how he normally deals with it. “It’s not on the agenda for this year.”

“And what is?” Enjolras asks.

“Dunno. Normally, Eponine and I do a thing, but she’s doing Christmas with her siblings and Combeferre’s family. And Jehan…well, unless he’s left Montparnasse by then, I think whether or not I see him on Christmas will entirely depend on what sort of mood Montparnasse is in.”

“Do you think he will?” Enjolras asks. “Leave Montparnasse, I mean.”

Grantaire shrugs. “Eventually, yeah. It might be a ways off yet still, but he’ll figure it out and get out when he’s ready to.” And when Jehan is ready to leave that asshole, Grantaire intends on being ready to help out anyway he can.

Enjolras nods. “I just don’t get how he can stay at all if he’s being treated like that.”

“Jehan will endure a lot of shit and a lot of pain for the people he loves,” he says. “Love is worth that to him. I mean, look at the people he loves—his parents, Montparnasse, me—we’ve all caused him pain—”

“You’re not a source of pain in his life,” Enjolras says. “You’re his best friend.”

“The people you love the most have the most power to hurt you,” he says. “I’m no exception to that. He and I have been friends for years and he’s carried me through some of my lowest moments, but I’m not blind. I know he worries and I know I’ve caused him more than my fair share of grief.”

“You can’t compare that to what his parents have done to him and what Montparnasse is doing to him now.”

“All I’m saying is that everyone he’s loved has caused him pain. By now, he probably expects it. It’s normal to him to associate love with pain. And all that means is that he’s not going to leave Montparnasse until he realizes that his love is one-sided now.”

There’s a moment of silence between them, like Enjolras is trying to figure out if there’s another way he can try to negate the idea that Grantaire has caused Jehan pain. “Well,” he says eventually, “if Jehan can’t slip away for a bit on Christmas, you’re more than welcome to join me in the afternoon. I’ve got some plans here in city.”

“What sort of plans?”

“Homeless shelter plans,” he says. “I like to volunteer, and they can always use help.”

Really, Enjolras could have proposed to go dumpster diving and he still would be all up on it. “Sure,” he says. “Sounds good.”

“I can swing by your apartment when I get back into the city,” he says. “Should be back around two.”

Before Grantaire can respond, he’s interrupted by Eponine.

“R,” Eponine says, rushing towards him. “Grantaire, you’ve got to—”

He looks up and sees her gesturing back to the dance floor and what he sees makes his stomach flip. Montparnasse has apparently gotten sick of watching Jehan dance with other people and instead of joining him on the floor is trying to forcibly remove him—and Courfeyrac is having none of it.

“Shit,” Grantaire says. He’s on his feet and vaguely aware that Enjolras is following after him.

“Let him go,” he hears Courfeyrac say as he gets nearer.

“You need to get him out of here before he gets himself killed,” Grantaire hisses to Enjolras.

Montparnasse has one hand wrapped around Jehan’s wrist and from the way Jehan winces, it looks like he’s holding on hard. Montparnasse shoves Courfeyrac back a step.

“No, no, no,” Jehan says, “Mont, please, don’t—”

Montparnasse barks at him to shut up. They’re apart enough from the rest of the dancers that no one outside of their friends has noticed yet what’s going—and even then, most of their friends haven’t spotted the trouble yet. Grantaire is grateful. He doesn’t want a scene—a scene is the last thing they want right now because a scene will provoke Montparnasse’s temper and that will only end badly for Jehan. He hopes Courfeyrac knows that too.

“Don’t you fucking talk to him that way!” Courfeyrac says.

“What’s going on here?” Grantaire says.

“Fuck off, Grantaire,” Montparnasse says. “We were just leaving.”

“You’re not going anywhere with him,” Courfeyrac snaps.

“Like you could stop me—”

“I can and I will, you son of a bitch,” Courfeyrac says.

Grantaire glances at Enjolras, who slips past him and takes Courfeyrac by the arm. “I need some fresh air,” he says. “Come get some air with me.”

“Get off, Enj,” Courfeyrac struggles even as Enjolras manhandles him away and once Combeferre joins the effort, Courfeyrac has no choice but to follow his friends onto the terrace. Even still, though, Courfeyrac’s temper has caught the attention of the rest of their friends. It takes no more than a fraction of a glance in Eponine’s direction before she moves to intercept them.

The last thing they need now is Bahorel getting involved.

Trusting that Eponine will be effective crowd control, Grantaire turns his attention back to Montparnasse. “Why are you leaving? Is something the matter?”

Montparnasse casts a cold look after Courfeyrac. “I’m beginning to feel that I’ve overstayed my welcome.” He looks back to Grantaire. “Does that answer your question or are you going to keep being a nosey bastard?”

“It’s fine,” Jehan says, sounding desperate to end this confrontation before it gets out of hand. He twists his wrist a little, as though trying to pull out of Montparnasse’s grip. But he just holds on tighter and Grantaire really hopes that there aren’t already bruises under the sleeve of Jehan’s shirt. “Honestly, it’s fine. We can leave. I’m getting tired anyway. There doesn’t need to be a big fuss.”

“I think you should let go of him,” Grantaire says. “You know how easily his skin bruises. I’m sure you don’t want to hurt him.”

“I’m not hurting him.”

“He’s not. He’s fine. It’s all fine, R, I swear,” Jehan says. “Nothing to worry about, I promise.”

By now the rest of their friends have gathered around and Grantaire really wants to tell them to piss off and give them some fucking space because he wants to resolve this in whatever way is least likely to end with Jehan getting a black eye and putting Montparnasse in a situation where he feels cornered or threatened isn’t going to help. Even without Courfeyrac’s temper egging Montparnasse on, everyone else is glaring at him, and Grantaire has no idea how Eponine has kept Bahorel in check. Even Joly, who’s as good-natured as they come, looks vicious and Grantaire wishes they would all just leave because this has the potential to turn bad and to do it quick.

“I’m sure it’s fine, Jehan,” Grantaire says. “But Montparnasse can see what this looks like, can’t he? He’s starting to cause a scene and Enjolas mentioned earlier that the police commissioner is here. You know the commissioner, don’t you, Parnasse? With the crowd that’s gathering, it might cause a scene

and I know you’ve worked hard to keep the police from knowing about your personal life because you didn’t want them causing trouble for Jehan. You know his dad would lose his shit if Jehan gets in trouble with the police again.”

It’s a fine line he’s walking and he worries for a moment that it’s not going to pay off, that he overestimated whatever affection Montparnasse might still harbor for Jehan, but then Montparnasse let _’_ s go. “The police commissioner is here?” he says.

Grantaire nods his head towards the other end of the dance floor. He has no idea if the commissioner is here or not, but this is the sort of event that might attract someone like that, and the dance floor is crowded enough that Montparnasse is unlikely to suss out his lie.

Montparnasse glances over his shoulder before tugging Jehan closer to him. “C’mon, then,” he says. “We should go.”

Bahorel lurches forward like he’s about to use whatever force he needs to to separate Montparnasse from Jehan, but Eponine digs the stiletto of her high-heeled shoe on Bahorel’s foot to keep him in place.

Grantaire shoves his hands in his pockets. “Probably not a good idea to leave with Jehan,” he says. “Not if you’re seen on the way out. You’ve worked too hard to keep Jehan from being associated with you. Seems like a shame to ruin that now—especially since he’s got that hearing for that protest in a few weeks. How about you slip out, and I’ll bring Jehan home in an hour once the party has died down a bit.”

He barely dares to breathe as Montparnasse thinks it over, but eventually he nods. “I want him home within the hour, Grantaire,” he says. “Don’t fuck around with me.”

Bahorel looks about ready to tell Montparnasse exactly what he thinks about all of this—and maybe crack a few skulls while he’s at it—but Eponine twists her heel, digging the stiletto deeper against his foot.

Once Montparnasse is gone, the tension surrounding them all fades and before anyone else can step forward and swarm Jehan with good intentions, Grantaire slings an arm around Jehan’s shoulders—gently, so very gently because he remembers what it’s like to have people accidently knock against bruises—and steers him away from the group. He’s about to lead Jehan to the terrace, only he catches sight of Enjolras out there with Combeferre and Courfeyrac and Courfeyrac is red in the face and gesticulating wildly and Grantaire thinks it’s probably best to shield Jehan from Courfeyrac’s display of temper right now. Jehan has never liked conflict and has probably had enough people yelling at him and about him recently. Instead he steers Jehan out into the hall.

“I’m sorry,” Jehan says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—Mont was just—I didn’t mean to ruin the party.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Grantaire says. “How are you feeling? Not too anxious?”

Jehan shakes his head. “I’m okay.”

He looks anything but okay. “Are you going to be okay if you go back to your apartment tonight?” he asks.

Jehan makes an odd sort of gesture between a shrug and a nod and he’s rapidly blinking back tears and Grantaire doesn’t hesitate to gently pull Jehan toward him and just hold him. Jehan tucks his head against his shoulder and Grantaire doesn’t say anything as Jehan’s shoulders shake. If he ever gets the chance, Grantaire is going to run Montparnasse over with a truck for this.

When Jehan calms down a little, Grantaire pulls back. He keeps his hands on Jehan’s shoulders and looks into his eyes. “Look, I’m only going to say this once, okay? If you ever want to talk about everything that’s going on, you only have to say the word, but this is the only time I’m going to bring it up. I don’t want you worrying that I’m going to try to make you talk about this every time you see me if you’re not ready.” He waits for Jehan to nod before he continues. “We all know that Montparnasse is hitting you,” he says. “And we’re all very worried about you and we’re willing to do whatever we can for you, but this is your life and it’s your choice. We’ll support you—I’ll support you—whatever you decide to do. I’m going to put together a kit for you—prepaid cell phone, gift cards for places, painkillers, and anything else I can think of—so if you need to get away quick, you won’t have to worry about grabbing anything. If you want, I can keep a hold of things like your social security card or your passport so you won’t have to worry about keeping track of that, either. I know that this really hard, but you’re not alone, okay?”

Jehan keeps his eyes trained on the floor and Grantaire feels a little sick. It was never supposed to be like this. He was never meant to play the role of the comforter. That was always Jehan’s role in their relationship. Grantaire’s the one who’s supposed to fall to pieces and Jehan always puts him back together and he’s really not sure what he’s supposed to do now that their roles have been reversed.

“Jehan?” he prompts.

“Mont’s normally not like this,” Jehan says.

“I know,” Grantaire says.

“I still love him.”

“I know that too.”

“I just want things to go back to the way they were.” Jehan looks up at him and Grantaire can see on his face that he wants to be reassured that there’s still a chance that things can go back.

But Grantaire doesn’t think there is and he’s not going to lie and perpetuate whatever delusions of hope that Jehan has. So he says something that he believes wholeheartedly. “You’ll get through this, Jehan,” he says. “You’re stronger than you think you are, and you’ll get through this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a few hours later than normal. Thanks to a very good friend of mine, I've spent the last few days (and especially the last few hours, oh my gosh!) being emotionally abused by a series of kinky romance novels. I finished reading, though, and now business can resume as usual :)
> 
> Thank you so much, as always, for your kind words and support and general awesomeness. I love hearing from you guys :) You're all the very best.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday


	47. Chapter Forty-Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eponine (and siblings) spend Christmas with Combeferre (and parents)

Combeferre had invited Eponine and her siblings to do Christmas with his family not long after Thanksgiving, and at the time Eponine had no qualms in agreeing. Now that it’s Christmas Eve and she has bundled up Gavroche and Azelma to spend a couple day at Combeferre’s childhood home…now she’s beginning to have second thoughts. [  
](http://lesmis-bigbang.dreamwidth.org/)

Stupid second thoughts, but second thoughts nevertheless, because why did she think this was a good idea? Spending Thanksgiving with her boyfriend and his rich family is one thing. Thanksgiving is a non-committal holiday. It’s the sort of thing you just sort of…show up for. And if the host is cooking for more than fifteen people to begin with, than having a couple of extra people to feed isn’t a problem at all.

But Christmas is different. Christmas is…intimate. There are gifts and expenses and weird family traditions which no one can remember how they started. At least, she assumes people have weird family traditions, because her family—well, they’re not much on traditions. She thinks the closest thing to a tradition she can think of is getting donuts Christmas morning. Donuts. Not even fancy donuts from Krispy Kreme or anything—just run-of-the-mill glazed things from the closest gas station.

But when they arrive, she knows the instant Combeferre’s mom ushers them inside that this is _exactly_ the kind of family that has decades old traditions and abundant and lavish Christmases and suddenly she’s thinking that she would be much better off having a quiet Christmas with Grantaire and her siblings and maybe Jehan if they can get him away from Montparnasse for a few hours.

The house is decked out for Christmas—beautifully so, but Eponine’s never seen this many Christmas decorations in her life. Lights and garlands on the banister. A purely decorative tree in the dining room and a larger tree with colored lights and home-made decorations in the family room. Little ceramic Santas and reindeers on tables and over the mantle. Homemade stockings hang over the fireplace and she’s shocked to see that Combeferre’s mother went through the trouble of making her and her siblings stockings to match the family’s.

Shocked and…well, a little _angry._ Part of her knows that this is done with good intentions and when she glances under the tree and sees far more presents than even remotely necessary for just three people, she realizes that Combeferre’s parents have also bought her and Azelma and Gavroche presents. And it’s completely irrational, she knows this, but her first instinct is to say _how dare they?_

She’s perfectly capable of taking care of her younger siblings and giving them a good Christmas. She’s been doing this for _years_ and she doesn’t need her boyfriend’s rich parents stepping in and treating them like…like charity cases. They’re not. Not even close. She sets money aside all year for a Christmas fund so she can afford to get her family and her friends nice things. And Grantaire always gets Azelma and Gavroche something—every year, without fail, he gets them something small but nice and useful because he’s practically family and that’s what family does. And in recent years, Jehan has pitched in, giving her siblings nice things because he’s Jehan and that’s what he does. She’s made sure that Azelma and Gavroche always have the best Christmas they can, and this year is no different.

And it smarts that Combeferre’s parents have just…stepped in and assumed that she couldn’t do enough for her family.

But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t cause a scene or make a fuss. She smiles at Combeferre’s mom as she directs her and Azelma to the guest room where they can leave their things. At their family dinner that night—ham and twice-baked potatoes and some divine thing called pretzel salad and homemade rolls—she makes polite conversation with Combeferre’s parents and does her best to help Azelma feel at ease, because she knows without anyone saying anything that her sister feels out of place here. Gavroche is young enough that the social class differences between their family and Combeferre’s are easily ignored and the whole dinner he chatters away about this and that. She notices that he brings up Courfeyrac on more than one occasion, delighted that Combeferre’s parents know Courfeyrac too, and she wonders if it was really a good idea to introduce someone as impressionable as Gavroche to Courfeyrac, but she brushes it off because at the very least Courf is a better male role model than Montparnasse.

But with as comfortable as Gavroche is, Azelma is not. She’s silent through dinner and she picks at her food. Eponine doesn’t miss the way her sister stares at the nice dishes and silverware that the Combeferres have or the way she keeps smoothing down her blouse, as though she’s self-conscious of her second-hand clothes when Combeferre and his parents are dressed so nicely. It’s not like his parents are trying to make them feel second-rate, but it’s not like Eponine and Azelma are blind. They know they don’t fit in here. They don’t belong in homes that have formal dining rooms and libraries and dedicated guest bedrooms with _en suite_ bathrooms.

After dinner, Combeferre’s dad reads them the Christmas story from the New Testament and Combeferre gives her an apologetic half-smile because he knows that she’s not terribly religious. For the first time tonight, though, he seems to notice that she’s not as relaxed as she normally is.

“What’s the matter?” he asks quietly as his dad flips through pages in the family Bible to get to the right passages.

She shakes her head because she knows that she’ll just sound bitchy and ungrateful. Combeferre’s parents are genuinely nice people. She knows that. She got on just fine with them at Thanksgiving, but this all feels different and how do you explain to your boyfriend that you’re upset because his parents are being _too_ generous?

Combeferre, master of nonverbal communication that he is, gives her a little look that both reassures her and suggests that they should talk about this later. He holds her hand, his thumb gently rubbing against her hand, the entire time his dad reads the Christmas story.

Once religious obligations are out of the way, Combeferrre offers to help his mother clean up the kitchen but she shoos him away, insisting that his father will help, and tells Combeferre to go turn on a Christmas movie for everyone down in the basement.

The basement has, of course, been converted into a home movie theater with oversized leather armchairs and a projector instead of a TV. Gavroche instantly falls in love with all of it and Combeferre pulls out a dusty box of holiday themed movies and tells Gavroche to pick one out. Azelma joins him, loudly protesting that anything he’ll pick will be dumb, which makes Eponine smile a little. She’s grateful that her sister seems a little more relaxed now that Combeferre’s parents are out of the way.

While they bicker over movie choices, Combeferre pulls her down beside him onto one of the leather sofas.

“What’s going on?” he asks again.

She shakes her head. “It’s nothing.”

“Is it really nothing? Or is it nothing that you want to talk about nothing?”

She blinks at him because most men she knows don’t make that distinction and she’s not sure how on earth she managed to find one who does. “It’s Christmas Eve,” she says. “Let’s not talk about it right now.”

He presses a kiss against her temple and pulls her close to him. With his arm around her shoulders, it’s easy to feel safe and secure and it’s easy to forget that this place feels as far from _home_ as she could possibly imagine.

Gavroche and Azelma finally decide on a movie to watch and she gets the gift of watching Combeferre and his dad try to fiddle with the tech set-up to get the DVD to play properly and watching Combeferre and his dad with their matching glasses and matching perplexed looks as they try to sort it out. Once the movie is running, Eponine has her sister sit on the floor in front of her and she spends the next two hours playing with Azelma’s hair the way she knows her sister likes. Combeferre scratches her back absently as she does.

They all head to bed around midnight, with her and Azelma sharing the guest room and Gavroche tucked away in Combeferre’s old room—which Eponine protested because it meant that Combeferre is spending the night on a cot in his dad’s study, but Combeferre assured her that it was fine and said that his mom insisted on this sleeping arrangement. When she goes downstairs to get a glass of water, Combeferre pulls her into the dimly lit study.

“I don’t think your mom wanted us to spend the night together,” she says, pushing her hair out of her face. It’s the only reason she can think why his mom would insist that Combeferre sleep here instead of in his old room.

Combeferre rolls his eyes a little. “She likes to think that we haven’t done anything more than hold hands and chastely kiss under the mistletoe and I’m not going to make her confront that truth before she’s ready,” he says. “But I wanted to talk to you. You’ve seemed a little down all night. I just want to know what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says.

“Nothing,” he repeats.

“Yes, nothing.”

He sighs and sits down on the edge of his cot. “Eponine, if you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong, that’s fine, but please don’t pretend that nothing’s wrong when it’s obvious to both of us that something _is_ wrong.”

“What do you want me to say?”

He reaches out and takes her hand, pulls her close to him. Why does she suddenly feel like crying? And why is Combeferre so damn nice? This isn’t even fair. “Let’s just talk,” he says. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

She looks up to the ceiling, willing the tears in her eyes not to spill over. “It’s just stupid, okay? And I know it’s stupid, so I’m not going to say it out loud and make myself sound like some kind of bitch.”

“You’re hardly a bitch,” Combeferre says.

“You might think that now…”

“Seriously, Eponine, I can’t think of anything you could be thinking or feeling that would make you some kind of bitch,” he says. “And even if what you’re thinking or feeling is stupid, you’re still feeling it. It doesn’t become less valid just because you’d rather not be feeling this way.”

“And who gave you that particular bit of wisdom?”

“Honestly?” he says with a soft little smile that is reserved for when he’s thinking fondly of Enjolras or Courfeyrac. “Courf. It’s easy to forget sometimes, but when it comes to emotions, Courf is usually spot on.”

When she doesn’t say anything, Combeferre sighs. “Please, will you tell me what’s going on?”

She stands up and pulls away from Combeferre, even though doing that makes her feel more vulnerable. But she has the feeling that what she’s going to say isn’t going to go over well and it’ll be easier if she’s the one who pulls away first. She’d rather shut herself away than have Combeferre be the one who shuts her out. “How much money did your parents spend on me and my brother and sister?” she asks.

“What?”

“How much money did they spend?” she asks.

Combeferre adjusts his glasses. “I don’t really know, to be honest,” he says. “My mom likes giving gifts, but I’m sure she didn’t buy anything to exorbitant.”

“Gavroche told me that he’s got a half-dozen presents under that tree, and that’s not including the presents me and Grantaire got him. You don’t think that’s a bit much?”

“I’m sure she was just trying to make you and your siblings feel welcome.”

“Well, it doesn’t make me feel welcome. It makes me feel like a fucking charity case! Ferre, she sewed us _stockings_. What am I supposed to make of that?”

“Will it make you feel better to know that Enjolras and Feuilly both have stockings made in that same pattern? She always makes stockings for people who spend Christmas with us—and Feuilly’s Jewish.”

“How is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t know,” Combeferre says. “I’m not even sure what you’re upset about.”

“My siblings and I aren’t charity cases, Combeferre. We’re people—your parents can’t just…just adopt us out of some weird misplaced desire to help the poor or something!”

“I understand that this probably feels weird for you,” he says slowly, “and I’m not trying to discredit how you feel because, well, you feel the way you feel. There’s no right or wrong way to feel, but I can promise you that my parents aren’t doing this because they pity you or Gavroche or Azelma, okay? You barely know my parents, so I understand that you really don’t have any other way to interpret their behavior, but you know me, and I swear that my parents aren’t doing this because you’re charity cases. They don’t think they’re getting, I don’t know, extra Christian points or anything for this.”

She folds her arms across the chest. “So why are they doing it, then? What on earth could have possessed them to do this?”

“Because I love you and even though they barely know you, they know how I feel about you and that makes you important to them.”

“You what?”

“What?”

“You said you love me.”

Combeferre freezes for a moment, and even though the light is dim she’s fairly certain that he looks panicked. “Sorry,” he says.

“Sorry?”

“Sorry. I didn’t—I shouldn’t have said that.”

“So, what? You don’t love me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you do love me?” She’s mortified by the way her voice squeaks when she says that.

He hesitates again. “Yes, I do.”

“Shit, Ferre, we’ve been dating for what—six weeks? You haven’t even known me for three months! You can’t _love_ me.”

He frowns at her. “You don’t get to tell me whether or not I love you,” he says, using the firm voice that is usually reserved for when Enjolras or Courfeyrac get worked up about something. “But I do love you.”

She feels terrified. Utterly terrified. He can’t…he can’t love her. Love is too strong of a word, too intense, too real and how did they suddenly end up here? How are they standing in his parents’ house in their pajamas—she’s not even wearing cute pajamas—on Christmas Eve with him suddenly confessing his love for her? She doesn’t like the word love. There’s too much power in it, too many expectations. She uses the word freely with her siblings and with Grantaire and Jehan and with friends for whom her feelings are completely platonic…but not Combeferre. Combeferre doesn’t get to use that word, doesn’t get to hear it. There’s too much power there.

And she doesn’t like it.

“And when exactly were you going to tell me this?”

“I wasn’t.”

“You weren’t going to tell me you love me?”

Combeferre sighs again and adjusts his glasses. “Not yet, I wasn’t,” he says. “I didn’t—I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“Obligated,” she says flatly.

“To say it back or anything,” he says. “I understand that this word is…charged. Once you say you love someone, things change and there’s no going back, so I wanted to wait. I wanted to wait until we’d been dating a bit longer and I…hell, Eponine, I’ve been working on this whole little schpiel about how I didn’t expect you to say it back if you didn’t feel the same way and all that, but there it is. I love you. I am in love with you. I—”

“Stop,” she says. “Just stop.”

“Eponine—”

“No, I’m not going to listen to this.”

Combeferre gets to his feet and he puts his hands on her shoulders to hold her still. “Eponine, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

But he smiles and he shakes his head. “It really is,” he says. “I’ve been feeling this way for a while now, and I have no expectations—absolutely none—for you to suddenly confess your love for me or anything like that. As far as I’m concerned, this changes nothing between us. My feelings for you are _my_ feelings and all they mean is that I want to keep dating you, I want to keep kissing you, I want to keep making you happy, because it makes me happy when you’re happy. Nothing has changed from an hour ago and right now on my end.”

“I don’t…I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

She’s never told a boyfriend that she loves him. She doesn’t even know what that means, not really, and the last time a boyfriend told her that he loved her, she just patted his back and said, “That’s nice.” Combeferre deserves better than _that’s nice_.

Combeferre just pulls her into a hug, wraps his arms around her and holds her tightly, resting his cheek against her hair. His hug brings back the deep feelings of safety and security. She wraps her arms around his waist and fists her hands in his shirt.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he says.

She nuzzles into his shoulder a little. “I really like you,” she says. She will.not.cry.

She can feel Combeferre smile and he presses a tender kiss to her hair. “I really like you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, friends! A chapter that leans more toward fluff than heartbreaking angst haha. It's been a while since we've had that.
> 
> Anyway, thank you all so much for the comments/kudos/good vibes/etc. I know I say this every week, but I really do love hearing from you and it really brightens my day :)
> 
> In other news, I've signed up to participate in the [Les Mis Big Bang](http://lesmis-bigbang.dreamwidth.org/) but I have absolutely zero ideas on what to write, so feel free to prompt me in the comments or on [tumblr](http://kingesstropolis.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I hope you all have a lovely week and the next chapter will be up next Tuesday :)


	48. Chapter Forty-Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Eve with the Courfeyracs

Christmas morning with the Courfeyracs is a quiet family affair. Just Courfeyrac and his sister and his parents. They wake up late and leisurely look through stockings and then binge on cinnamon monkey bread while they open presents. Christmas mornings are relaxed and sedate and as much as Courfeyrac loves parties, he wouldn’t change Christmas morning for anything.

Besides, the annual family Christmas Eve party more than makes up for the lack of party in the morning. The party used to be hosted by his mom’s mom, but she started getting too old so Courfeyrac’s mother opened up the house to her parents and siblings and their assorted families for their traditional Christmas Eve party. Good food and better company and now that Courfeyrac is finally twenty-one he can drink without having to sneak around his mom.

This year, as in years passed, Marius joins them for the party. He started coming during high school, right around the time when matters between him and his own family started getting tense, and this year, Marius brings Cosette, which inspires any number of jokes from Courfeyrac’s uncles about how odd it is for Marius to bring someone home for the holiday when Courfeyrac comes stag. He laughs off the jokes with good cheer, but he can’t help but thinking about Jehan every time anyone asks him if he’s seeing someone. He wonders if Jehan is safe, if he’s at least not completely miserable if not happy. He worries that Montparnasse will get drunk or high over the holidays and become violent. He worries that Jehan won’t have anyone to patch him up since Combeferre is out of town and Jehan probably won’t want to go to the hospital.

But he forces himself to smile at his relatives and act like nothing’s bothering him. He can’t be doing too good of a job of it because his sister and Marius both keep casting him concerned looks all night.

Around 9:30, his cousins with young children start heading out. It’s late enough that the kids have run themselves ragged and will hopefully fall asleep in the car ride home, saving his cousins-who-are-parents the hassle of dealing with over-excited kids on Christmas Eve. Within the hour, his older relatives start heading out as well and Courfeyrac accepts the kisses from elderly aunts with good graces and better jokes and once the extended family has been cleared out of the house, Courfeyrac retires to the basement with his sister and Marius and Cosette while his parents play Santa and stuff stockings for tomorrow morning.

In the basement, Cassandra commandeers the TV remote and turns _A Christmas Story_ , which has been playing non-stop on one of the channels all day. Courfeyrac and his sister have both seen the movie enough times that they could probably reenact it, but Courfeyrac is still glad that they catch the movie towards the beginning. He wants the distraction.

“Oh good,” he says, taking a seat on the floor so that Marius and Cosette can share the sofa, “we haven’t missed the good part.”

“Isn’t the whole movie the good part?” Marius asks.

Courfeyrac laughs because he’s watched this movie a dozen times with Marius and it’s gotten to the point where they can both quote it line for line. “Touche,” he says.

“Are you going to stay for the whole movie, Marius?” Cass asks. She’s procured a kit filled with different bottles of nail polish and she pulls a bottle of purple and sets to work on doing her toe nails.

That question, of all things, makes Marius blush. “I’m—we’re—that is Cosette and I are meeting my grandfather for midnight mass,” he says.

Courfeyrac cranes around to get a better view of Marius. “I didn’t know you and your grandfather were on speaking terms,” he says. Marius had been on rocky ground with his grandfather since he was a teenager, and a year ago they’d gotten into an explosive argument that ended with Marius being cut off and in need of a place to stay. He crashed on the couch in Courfeyrac’s apartment for about three months while he saved up the money to get a place of his own. As far as Courfeyrac had known, Marius hadn’t spoken to his grandfather since.

“Oh, well, you’ve had other things on your mind,” Marius said. “I really didn’t want to bother you.”

He frowns. “It’s not bother,” he says. “So are things on the mend then?”

“Things are better,” Marius says. “And he wants to meet Cosette. We’re only doing the service together. He wanted to tonight and tomorrow both, but I couldn’t. I mean, I’ve been doing Christmas Eve here for nearly seven years.”

“And we’re doing Christmas morning with Papa,” Cosette says. “He’s been rather anxious to meet Marius.”

Marius looks absolutely terrified at the prospect of finally meeting Cosette’s father—who, from what Courfeyrac has heard, is very protective of Cosette. Courfeyrac reaches around to pat Marius’s knee. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and you’ll be fine,” he says.

Cassandra snorts. “Consdiering there’s not much you wouldn’t do, that’s not really helpful advice.”

“All my advice is helpful advice,” he says, trying for the right level of glibness but falling short. He sighs, which is a mistake because it makes his sister give him an odd look.

“So, Michel,” Cass says. She only calls him Michel when she’s being serious. The rest of the time he’s just Courf (which both of their parents find ridiculous). She reaches out and grabs his foot so she can start doing his toenails as well. “You want to tell me what’s had you so glum in the face all night?”

“Not the purple, Cass,” he says, referring to the bottle of purple nail polish in her hands in an attempt to deflect her question. He knows better than to fight against the inevitable painting of his toenails because he’s endured many a make-over from his sister before and if he doesn’t want to look like a drag queen, it’s best to just go along with her. “Purple really isn’t my color.”

“Hot pink it is,” she says, swapping out the bottles. “It’s okay, though. It has sparkles.”

“I do like sparkles,” he says dryly.

She adjusts his foot so she has better access to his toes. “So,” she says again. “About the glum face?”

“It’s nothing you can help with,” he says.

“He’s worried about Jehan,” Marius says.

Courfeyrac grabs a throw pillow off the couch and lobs it at Marius’s face.

Marius bats it aside. “Is that supposed to be a secret?” he asks, looking to Cosette for the answer.

“If it is a secret,” she says, “it’s a very poorly kept one.”

“Jehan,” Cass says. “He’s the boy from Thanksgiving, right? The one with the douche bag for a dad?”

“That’s the one,” Courfeyrac says.

“Is he spending Christmas with his family?” she asks. “I’d be worried about him too. His dad is awful.”

“He’s spending Christmas with his boyfriend,” Courfeyrac says. He tries not to spit the word _boyfriend_ but it’s hard. It’s so damned hard.

Cass looks up from his toenails. “Okay, little brother, spill.”

Courfeyrac doesn’t say anything because he’s not sure he’ll be able to without becoming completely livid.

“We think his boyfriend is abusive,” Marius says.

“Not think,” Courfeyrac says. “Know. We know. We fucking know.”

“How abusive is abusive?” Cass asks.

“Like his boyfriend gives him fucking concussions abusive,” Courfeyrac says.

“Combeferre says it wasn’t a concussion,” Marius says.

“And that makes a difference?” Courfeyrac snaps. He hates this. He hates feeling like this. “Ferre nearly had to stitch his effing head back together!”

“You’re right,” Cosette says, taking Marius’s hand. “The severity of it doesn’t make a difference. It’s still no good for him.”

Cass gives his foot a little squeeze before adding another coat to his toes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s really rough. Have you talked to him about it? About leaving his boyfriend and all that?”

“He denies that anything’s wrong,” Courfeyrac says. Sighing, he tells Cassandra everything because he’s really not one for keeping secrets and it feels so nice not to bear this burden alone. Not that he’s ever been bearing it alone, because Enjolras and Combeferre and Bahorel and Feuilly and Grantaire and _everyone_ has been clued in to the situation, and they’re all just as livid, all just as concerned.

They don’t feel the same way about Jehan that Courfeyrac does, though. Their hearts don’t stutter whenever Jehan smiles in their directions. They don’t long to hold him, to love him the way Courfeyrac does, and as irrational as all of this is, Courfeyrac feels that it means they don’t ache and agonize over Jehan’s situation in quite the same way that he does. They worry, of course, and they’re all desperate to help, but Courfeyrac is sure that the depth of feeling isn’t quite the same.

He’s spent the last several days scouring the internet looking for more advice, looking for something tangible that he can hold on to, looking for something that he can _do._ As much as he’d like to kidnap Jehan and maybe stab Montparnasse in the chest while he’s at it, he knows he can’t and it kills him. It kills him to sit on the side-lines and hold Jehan’s hand through this when he just wants to swoop in and make everything all better. He felt blind rage at the fundraiser the other day and looking back, he knows his own behavior didn’t help Jehan at all and he’s been feeling guilty about it ever since. He’s considered calling or texting a dozen times since he’s been home, but he can’t bring himself to because he doesn’t know if Montparnasse keeps tabs on who Jehan talks to and he can’t live with the idea that he might accidentally be the cause of more of Jehan’s suffering.

He wants Jehan to be happy and he doesn’t feel like he’s really asking for all that much, but as of right now, it feels like he’s asking for the impossible.

When he’s done talking, Cassandra is looking at him with complete empathy and it kind of makes him want to curl up in her arms the way he did when he was little and afraid of thunderstorms. Why didn’t he talk to Cass about this earlier? She’s always been a phenomenal listener.

“That’s hard,” she says. “That’s really hard, and I know this advice sucks, but really the best thing you can be doing for him right now is supporting him. I’ve been where you are before,” she squeezes his foot a little and he knows that she’s thinking about his disastrous relationship with Richard from two years ago, “and it’s terrifying to know that someone you love needs help and not being in a position to force them to get the help he needs, but getting angry about this—and especially getting angry at him—will only drive him away.”

“I know all of this already, Cass.”

“I know you know,” she says. “You’re nothing if not extremely sensitive to what people need. You’ve always been that way. Right now your friend needs your love and your support—and I have complete confidence that you’ll find a way to show him that.”

He nods and allows her to finish painting his toenails, trying to think of what he can do to help Jehan. When she’s done, she sidles up next to him and just lets him sit and be quiet and he’s grateful that she and Marius and Cosette let him have the space he needs to think. Around 11:30, he sees Marius and Cosette out, giving them both hugs and Cosette a kiss on the cheek. He tells Marius that if he needs to talk about thinks with his grandfather, he’s always available to listen. Marius smiles at him—that same goofy, dopey smile that he’s had since Courfeyrac met him—and reassures him that he’ll think of a way to help Jehan.

Courfeyrac appreciates his reassurance more than he has words to say.

Instead of returning to the basement, Courfeyrac takes a detour to the family room where his parents are giggling and drinking wine and stuffing stockings. Knowing that his mother will be horribly upset if he happens to get a peak at his stocking before tomorrow morning, he walks into the room with his hand over his eyes. “Mom? Dad?” he says.

“What do you need, darling?” his mom asks.

“Do we have any sort of after Christmas plans I need to be aware of?”

“After Christmas plans?” his dad asks.

“Yeah, like anything going on between tomorrow and New Year’s?”

“Nothing set in stone,” his mom says. “Why? Do you have plans?”

“I want to make plans,” he says. He’s been mulling over ideas in his head for the last hour and these ideas are starting to take shape. “I’ve got a friend who could use some extra holiday cheer, and I don’t intend to miss the opportunity.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so exhausted right now that I almost forgot to post this. My bad.
> 
> Thanks so much for the comments/kudos/support/tumblr follow/general good vibes and all around awesomeness, friends :) I love hearing from you all and you never fail to brighten my day!
> 
> Next chapter (Christmas afternoon with Enjolras and Grantaire) will be up next Tuesday.


	49. Chapter Forty-Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras and Grantaire do Christmas afternoon

It’s early afternoon when Enjolras knocks on Grantaire’s door. He hopes to find Grantaire in at least a decent mood, because he’s feeling emotionally run down himself. He spent less than twenty-four hours with his parents, but spending even that much time just leaves him feeling empty and more than a little hopeless. His mother was so hungover this morning that she only barely managed to haul herself out of bed and his dad spent most of the time taking care of business on the phone and Enjolras sat around and wondered why he even bothered to come home.

And with that in mind, maybe spending time with Grantaire isn’t the best idea, because it’s not as though Grantaire is some welcome spot of sunshine all the time, and if Grantaire is having a bad day, then this day will be a complete disaster.

But still. He was the one who invited Grantaire along, and even he knows it would be lousy to bail now. And it’d be even worse to bail on the shelter now.

He knocks on the door again when Grantaire doesn’t answer. He hopes Grantaire isn’t passed out drunk in the apartment somewhere. He doesn’t have the patience to deal with that right now.

But his second knock is answered with Grantaire hollering at him that the door is unlocked.

He steps inside to find Grantaire pulling on a shirt before collapsing onto the couch to pull on a pair of boots. “Sorry,” he says. “I meant to be ready before you showed up—you seem like a stickler for punctuality—but I slept in late and then Jehan called, so I only just got out of the shower. Sorry.”

“Is Jehan okay?” Enjolras asks, frowning a little.

“His dad called this morning,” Grantaire says. “Reamed him pretty bad about not coming home for Christmas—which is shit because it’s not like his dad even _wants_ him around, just wants Jehan to do what he says, you know?—anyway, he was upset about that, so we just talked.”

“And Montparnasse?” he asks.

“Doesn’t give a fuck, as far as I can tell,” he says. “Completely disengaged, which probably hurts Jehan just as much as…anything else. But Parnasse insisted on talking to me before I got off the phone with Jehan and just spouted some shit about how Jehan’s just overreacting and how I don’t need to be worried because he’s got everything under control.”

“Do you trust him with Jehan?” Enjolras asks.

Grantaire stands up and grabs his coat which was slung over the back of the sofa. “Not at all,” he says. “I told Jehan that he’s welcome over here whenever he wants. He knows where the spare key is and he’s never had a problem letting himself in when no one’s been home before, but I don’t know if he feels safe enough just leaving the asshole for the afternoon like that, and short of forcing him out of his apartment, there’s not much else I can do. Told him to call me again if he needs me, so I might have to step out.”

“Are you sure we can’t force him out of that apartment?” Enjolras says. “I don’t like him being there. None of us like it.”

“You haven’t known Jehan as long as I have,” he says, “so you haven’t seen enough to know, but you can’t force Jehan to do anything he doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t like being told what to do and he’s a stubborn ass if he feels like he’s being pushed into something.”

“Really?”

“I know. He doesn’t look it, but trust me on this. He can be a stubborn fucker.” He shrugs into his jacket and pats his pockets as though checking for phone and keys and wallet. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah,” he says. “The shelter’s just a couple of blocks from here, so I hope you don’t mind walking.”

“Not at all,” Grantaire says.

Out on the street, Enjolras sighs. When Grantaire shoots him a questioning look, he says, “I know all of this needs to be Jehan’s decision and everything, but this all makes me feel helpless and I don’t like feeling that there’s nothing I can do.”

“Who says there’s nothing we can do?” Grantaire asks. “I’ve spent the last week researching all this shit. Eponine and I have put together an emergency kit—prepaid cell phone, gift cards, medical stuff—so if he needs to get away from Parnasse quick, he doesn’t have to worry about searching for his phone and wallet first. I told him at the fundraiser that we were setting things aside for him and I reminded him again today, but he kind of ignored me about it. Still, though, he knows. I know he knows. And I’ve found all the abuse shelters in the area—which only helps so much because most of them don’t take men, which I get it, they’re supposed to be a safe places for women who’ve been abused by men, so having men around is a bit of a no-go, but it’s still annoying. Eponine found a couple of shelters in the area that cater specifically to the LGBT community, though, so we can always hope they’ll have an open bed for him.”

“He won’t need a shelter,” Enjolras says, shoving his hands in his pockets.       

Grantaire glances at him. “Well, it’s not like he can stay with Parnasse.”

“No,” Enjolras says, “what I mean is that between the lot of us, we can find someone to take him in for a bit. It’ll be transient, but we can take care of our own. Ferre and I have a spare room, Courf has a pull out couch that Marius crashed on for about three months, Bahorel sublets the extra room at his place, but half the time it’s empty. We’re not going to leave Jehan out on the streets.”

Grantaire is silent for a moment. When he speaks, his voice sounds rougher than normal. “Thanks,” he says. “That means a lot.”

“So what else have you been doing for him?” Enjolras asks, wondering if this is the first time Grantaire has ever had a support network like this because he thinks it should have been obvious that the rest of them were never going to leave Jehan without a place to go. “What else can we be doing for him?”

“Not used to sitting around and waiting, are you?” Grantaire asks, smirking a little.

“It’s not really my style, no.”

“I know you want to just whisk him away from all of this. I get it. I want the same thing for him. I watched my mom go through this, I went through this, Eponine and her siblings dealt with crap like this—granted with me and Eponine and things it was a bit different. It’s different when it’s your parents instead of your romantic partner, but the end is the same.”

“How?”

“What?”

“How is it different?”

“When you’re a kid, you don’t have the choice to leave. You’re completely dependent on your parents for things. It sucks, but when you’re a kid in an abusive home, you don’t really have any choice but to rely on the adults to take care of you.” Grantaire shrugs. “When you’re an adult, yeah, there can be a lot of dependency issues at play, but an adult can leave and file police reports or restraining orders. I mean, that doesn’t make leaving easy, but it has to be his choice to leave and all we can do is be there for him and believe him when he comes clean about what’s been going on and reassure him that none of this is his fault. Which I’ve been doing—which Courf has been doing too, as far as I can tell.”

“Courf is much better at this kind of thing than I am,” he says. It’s something he’s always admired about his friend. Enjolras is great in front of a crowd, but it’s Courfeyrac who excels one-on-one. Enjolras has watched him for years to figure out how he does it, but it’s never gotten him anywhere. For Courfeyrac, things like this are as easy as breathing while Enjolras just sort of stumbles through and hopes that he doesn’t make things worse.

“You care,” Grantaire says. “We know you care. You don’t necessarily show it the same way, but we know you care and Jehan knows you care.” Grantaire pauses and studies Enjolras for a moment. “You’ve never really had to deal with something like this before, have you?”

“Courf dated an asshole like this a few years ago. It never escalated to the point of violence, but the asshole was manipulative and abusive and I…well, I said a lot of stupid things and drove Courf away when I should have been trying to help. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“Well,” Grantaire says, “if I know anything it’s that when you put your mind to something, you get it done, so I don’t think you need to worry about scaring Jehan off at this point.” Then he smiles. “Besides, I think Courfeyrac would actually murder you if you did something to make this work.”

When they arrive at the shelter, Enjolras leads Grantaire around the building to the door in the back, which leads to the employee break room and a couple of offices for the administrators who run the shelter.

“You can hang up your coat here,” he says, gesturing to the coat rack and waving at another volunteer reading a book in the break room.

Enjolras introduces Grantaire to the supervisor—a portly middle aged man named Dan Danielson—working this shift and they chat for a bit before Enjolras asks where they’re needed this afternoon.

“Normally I’d let you two work together,” Dan say, “but, Enjolras, it’d be a huge help if you could help keep the new volunteers in line in the kitchen and, Grantaire, there’s plenty of work to be done in the dining room if you don’t mind cleaning and heavy lifting.”

For the briefest of moments, Enjolras worries that Grantaire will balk at the menial labor the way he’s seen dozens and dozens of new volunteers do before. No one wants to clear tables and throw away trash. Everyone wants to serve food and stand in line with their friends and feel good about themselves for ladelling soup into bowls.

But Grantaire just shoves his hands into his pockets and says, “Just show me what you need me to do.”

Dan, who Enjolras  knows has probably been fighting this issue with new volunteers all day, nearly wilts with relief and instructs Enjolras to show Grantaire the ropes.

“If I didn’t know better,” Grantaire says as Enjolras leads him through to the front of the building, “I’d say he was grooming you to take over the place.”

“I just come here a lot, that’s all,” Enjolras says. He’s been volunteering here for a couple of years and he tries to come once a week. It’s often less during the school year when he’s bogged down with classes and midterms and papers, but he tries to make up for it over holidays and during the summer.

He had first volunteered here during his first semester of his freshman year. He’d been in a freshman civics class with Courfeyrac and they were all required to do some sort of service project that would put them outside their comfort zone. At Courf’s suggestion, they’d come here and—Enjolras hates admitting this—it was the first time he’d come face-to-face with what poverty and homelessness actually looked like. It was one of the first times he was confronted with his own wealthy upbringing and he’d been horrendously uncomfortable the entire time. Courfeyrac, of course, took to working here like he’d been born to do it and had spent his hours here laughing and eliciting smiles from people and helping people feel a bit better about their situations, but Enjolras had frozen. He hadn’t known what to say or what to do.  He’d mechanically served food to these people, not knowing what else to do.

At the time, part of him never wanted to come back. There would be other people to volunteer and take care of the problems these people faced, but Enjolras was never one to back down from a challenge and he hated that being in that situation had made him so uncomfortable in the first place.

So he kept coming back. Started making friends with the other volunteers, started listening when people shared their stories with him. Started looking at the needs of the people this shelter served and the logistics of providing for those needs. In the three years he’s volunteered here, he’s been responsible for starting up several life skills classes—mostly literacy programs and financial skills classes. Last year he worked with Combeferre and Joly and some of their mentors in the medical community to start health classes and free clinic hours. He doesn’t like taking credit for the work that’s done here, even if he does get told on multiple occasions that none of this wouldn’t have happened without him. He may have instigated the changes—started asking the right questions to the right people—but it was the full-time volunteers and employees who made it happen.

In the dining room, he spends a couple of minutes showing Grantaire around and telling him what to look out for. It’s grunt work, mostly. Clearing tables and helpding people find empty seats and cleaning up after people, but Grantaire doesn’t seem to mind and he prods Enjolras towards the serving line.

“Don’t you have people to whip into shape?” he says. “I spent all four years of high school bussing tables, I think I can handle it now without you, Enjolras.”

Enjolras retreats to the kitchen, where he helps direct the new volunteers—the sort of people who come in just at the holidays to serve food and feel good about themselves (and while those sort of volunteers are necessary and at least they’re helping, Enjolras has to try not to bristle when he thinks about the months when they lack necessary volunteers and how much better this influx of volunteers could be utilized then).

He can see Grantaire from the kitchen where he’s marshalling the volunteers, and it’s hard for Enjolras to keep his eyes off him. For as self-deprecating as the man is, he has a way with people. It’s not uncommon for Grantaire to make people smile and he has a certain way with the kids that show up. He squats down and makes eye-contact and it’s not long before the kids are laughing—probably at some pun or quip that Grantaire came up with on the spot. He’s fair with his time and attention, never lingering too long and always quick to find someone who looks particularly lonely or depressed.

It’s funny, Enjolras thinks, because when he first met Grantaire, he’d been convinced that the man was a rude, lazy, uncouth drunkard. He’s not sure if the change he sees is simply because he knows Grantaire better now or because Grantaire wears sobriety well, but he’s grateful for it. He’s grateful for the fact that their paths have crossed.

“You two have been here long enough,” he says, giving them each a gruff handshake. “Go home, boys. Enjoy your holiday.”

Once they’re outside, Grantaire reaches behind him to rub a crick out of neck. “Shit, Enjolras, if I’d known physical labor were on the docket today, I would have done some stretches before hand.”

“I should have warned you,” he says, because that was the work he anticpated them both doing when they arrived this afternoon. “And you really did have the harder job. I should have come out to help you after the first couple of hours.”

But Grantaire waves him off. “They needed you back in the kitchen keeping all those volunteers in line. You’re good at dealing with people like that—all I’m good for is cleaning up after people. You’re the one who did the important work.”

“Keeping rich teenagers from saying classist things to the people in line as they serve up food is important, but you did so much more. Not only did you keep the dining room in order, you helped cheer people up and didn’t you fix that broken table at one point?”

“Yeah? And how do you know I was doing all of that?”

“I was watching you.”

Grantaire’s step falters for a second and the expression on his face is inscrutable. “You were watching me?”

Enjolras can feel his face flushing though he doesn’t know why. Maybe he can blame it on the cold. “I was just trying to keep an eye on things. Needed to make sure that you didn’t any help or anything.”

“Right,” Grantaire says, smirking. After a moment, he says, “Here’s an idea. My place is empty tonight and as much as I’d like to think that I’ll get home to find that Jehan has set up camp on the couch because he’s decided to leave the asshole, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Why don’t you come up with me? With Combeferre gone, your place is as lonely as mine, and I don’t know about you, but I’d really appreciate the company. We could put on a movie and you can tell me all about Hollywood’s shitty attempts diverse representation in mainstream films.”

“Diverse media representation is actually really important, thank you,” he says, but when he looks over at Grantaire, the other man is still smirking at him.

“Come on,” Grantaire says when they get to his apartment building. “No one should spend the holiday alone.”

Enjolras hesitates because normally he does like spending his Christmases alone. After the morning with his parents, being alone is usually what he wants and what he needs, but right now, he’s finding it really difficult to deny Grantaire anything. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “All right.”

The grin the Grantaire gives him is almost shocking in it’s radiance. “That’s the spirit,” he says. “I’ll even let you pick what movie we watch.”

Enjolras snorts. “How benevolent.”

Grantaire is still smiling as he opens the door to his apartment building and holds it open for Enjolras. He even does a half-mocking bow as Enjolras passes and even though he can’t be certain, Enjolras is fairly certain he’s never seen Grantaire look quite this bright around their other friends.

He only barely admits it to himself, but he’s secretly pleased to think that maybe Grantaire is acting this way because of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have lots of things to say right now, but first of all, I want to thank you all (again, but you all deserve it) for your comments/kudos/support and general awesomeness. These last few months have been crazy for me, but you guys have helped out a lot. You rock.
> 
> In other news, I am moving 880 miles across the country this weekend and I'm not entirely sure what my internet set-up is going to be once I get to my summer abode. That means that there's a teeny-tiny chance that the next chapter won't be up on Tuesday. That said, I'm going to do my best to get it up on Tuesday because seriously guys, THINGS HAPPEN in the next chapter. THINGS.
> 
> I'm also considering setting up a writing blog type thing over the summer. Eventually I'd want to put up some stuff about the original fiction I've got on the back burner right now, but in the more immediate future it would mostly deleted scenes for this fic (and other fics)--chapters that were originally written in different POVs or snippets from Grantaire and Jehan as teenagers or scenes like the one that would logically follow this chapter that I just didn't have time to write. It'd be a hodge-podge of things and the quality of writing wouldn't be quite as up to scratch, but if it's something that (some of) you would be interested in, I'd be more willing to do it. 
> 
> Also, apologies if this chapter was rough and not up to par. It's given me a lot of trouble and I finally whipped it into (relative) shape when I should have been packing up my apartment.
> 
> Anyway, if all goes according to plan, the next chapter will be up on Tuesday. If it's not up on Tuesday, it will be up as soon as humanly possible.


	50. Chapter Fifty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Christmas with Jehan and Courfeyrac

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence at the end

It’s late on Christmas night and Jehan is getting ready for bed when he gets a text from Courfeyrac asking if he’ll be able to sneak away for a few hours the next day.

Well, technically the text is from Grantaire. Or at least his phone says it’s from Grantaire, but Jehan had changed Courf’s contact name on his phone after Mont got mad at him last Thursday. Mont knows and trusts Grantaire—well, trusts him as much as he trusts anyone, but Jehan thinks he’s less likely to read through messages from Grantaire than he is to read messages from Courf. Grantaire’s listed in his phone as Eponine (and Eponine is in his phone just as E), but he doesn’t think Mont will dig that deep into his phone to notice.

Jehan hesitates before texting back _what time?_

 **Grantaire** : _Early evening? Around seven, maybe? But I’m flexible. I can do whatever works for_ you

**Jehan:** _Let me check_

He knows he shouldn’t have to check, but he knows he needs to anyway. Dealing with Mont these days is like dealing with a dangerous animal and he doesn’t want to admit it to himself, but he’s a little afraid of his boyfriend these days. Mont hasn’t hit him since Thursday—well, that’s not quite right because Mont’s just aggressive these days and if Jehan’s not careful, then Mont will shove him or throw something at him, but it’s not as bad. It’s not as bad as Thursday was.

But the shoving and throwing things aside, things aren’t right between them and Jehan keeps reminding himself to be kind and understanding and patient with Mont’s mood swings. He and Mont have talked about this, he knows Mont needs his support right now, and it doesn’t feel right to him to withdraw his love and support when Mont clearly needs it just because Mont’s been a little…difficult lately.

He finds Mont out in the living room, once more watching crime dramas and drinking a beer. Jehan forces himself to take a deep breath, reminds himself that he’s dealing with his boyfriend who loves him and that there’s no reason for him to be afraid.

~~There are so many reasons for him to be afraid.~~

“Hey, Mont?” he says.

Mont glances over at him. “I thought you were getting ready for bed.”

“I was,” he says. “I am. I just…”

“What is it, Jehan?” Mont asks, his voice short.

Great. He’s already managed to make Mont annoyed. “R texted me. He wants to get together tomorrow night—maybe around seven? I just wanted to be sure you were okay with that before I agreed to it.”

When Mont looks at him this time, his gaze lingers a little longer than usual and Jehan can’t quite read his expression but he looks almost pleased. Like he’s pleased that Jehan knows to ask permission before leaving now, and isn’t that an unpleasant thought. Jehan pushes it from his mind, because certainly that’s not what Mont is thinking. That can’t be what he’s thinking. “Just you and Grantaire?”

“That’s right.” He doesn’t like lying, but he excuses it because it’s not like he’ll be doing anything with Courfeyrac that he wouldn’t be doing with Grantaire.

“What will you be doing?”

He shrugs. “R didn’t say,” he says. “I think maybe he wanted to know if I was free before he made plans. It’ll probably just be coffee or something. Or maybe going to an art gallery. He—we—that’s something he and I do together sometimes.”

“Tell Grantaire I want you back before ten,” he says. “It’s not safe for you to be out that late.”

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “Thanks, Mont.”

Mont nods at him and Jehan retreats to the bedroom and grabs his phone off the bed.

**Jehan:** _I can do seven, but I don’t want to stay out too late. Will three hours be enough?_

**Grantaire** : _Three hours will be more than enough. Should I pick you up at your place or do you want to meet somewhere?_

 **Jehan:** _Let’s meet somewhere_

He doesn’t want Courfeyrac anywhere near his apartment. He’s terrified what Mont might do to Courfeyrac—especially if he suspects the less-than-platonic feelings that Jehan knows Courfeyrac still has for him.

 **Grantaire:** _Musain sound good?_

 **Jehan** : _Musain sounds perfect_

 **Granataire:** _:D See you then_

As Jehan falls asleep that night—alone in bed because Mont wants to stay up late and complained that if Jehan wasn’t going to drink or smoke with him, then he was just going to ruin the mood—he can’t help but feel that Courfeyrac’s invitation was the best part of his Christmas.

* * *

Jehan is late to the Musain the next night, and the relief he sees on Courfeyrac’s face when he finally arrives is both comforting and troubling. He doesn’t want Courf—or anyone, for that matter—to worry over him. He knows things with Mont are bad and look worse, but it upsets him to think that his friends are overly concerned about him. They don’t need to worry about him.

But Courf’s worried expression quickly settles into a smile as he passes Jehan a dink. “I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t show up,” he says.

“Sorry,” Jehan says, taking a sip of his drink—a hazelnut macchiato, which warms him from the inside. “I had a little trouble getting out of the apartment.”

Translation: Mont was having second thoughts about letting him go out with “Grantaire” tonight.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here in one piece,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind that I ordered for you. I don’t want to keep you out too late, so I thought that it might be better to have something ready for you when you got here.”

“No, no,” Jehan says. “It’s fine. Should we get going then?”

He loves the smile Courfeyrac gives him—all warmth and kindness and joy. How long has it been since Mont looked at him like that?

Has Mont ever looked at him like that?

“We’ve got a bit of a walk ahead of us,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind. We can take a cab on our way back so you won’t be out too late.”

Typical, thoughtful Courfeyrac. He feels some sort of knot of anxiety and stress and tension that has nested somewhere between his heart and his lungs ease a little. “Thanks for inviting me to…whatever this is,” he says. “I haven’t been out of the apartment in days.”

“I know things have been…difficult with you and Montparnasse lately,” he says. “I thought you might want a little extra Christmas cheer.”

“I certainly could after yesterday,” he says.

He regrets his words when Courf frowns a little at him. “Lousy Christmas?” he asks.

“Not the worst one I’ve had,” he says. “But not the best either.”

The worst Christmas award goes to the Christmas when he was seven years old and had made his dad a card that he had painstakingly decorated with hand drawn flowers and his dad had yelled at him that he wasn’t supposed to like that kind of “girly shit” and then ripped the card up in front of him. It was the first time Jehan could ever remember having an anxiety attack.

And while yesterday wasn’t good, it certainly wasn’t at that level.

“Did Mont get you anything?” Courfeyrac asks. He sounds like he’d be willing to buy Jehan the moon if he says that Mont didn’t get him anything.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” he says.

“Oh?”

He sighs. “You know when you’re in kindergarten and you get invited to all the birthday parties of everyone in class and because you’re not really friends with any of them, you just get them what _you’d_ want for your birthday?”

Courfeyrac chuckles. “I gave a girl a soccer ball for her birthday once in kindergarten and she cried because it was a princess themed party and, according to her, princesses don’t play soccer—though my older sister disagrees.”

“Yeah, well, that was Mont’s approach to gift giving this year,” Jehan says.

“Do I want to know what he gave you?”

“No,” he says, because Courf really doesn’t need to know that Mont got him a couple grams of weed and some kinky sex toys, which Jehan forced himself to be grateful for, even though he specifically asked for the new Billy Collins book or maybe some nice flowers and it stung to realize that Mont just completely disregarded what he wanted. “But it doesn’t matter because it’s all in the past. It doesn’t matter. Do I get to know where we’re going?”

“Nope,” he says. “I want it to be a surprise.”

As they walk, Jehan asks about Courf’s Christmas, and Courf tells him about his family’s Christmas Eve party and about the quiet Christmas morning he spent with his parents and his sister. It all sounds lovely and Jehan wonders what it would have been like to spend the holiday with Courfeyrac instead of Montparnasse. He tries to ignore the fact that he thinks he’d have been significantly happier with Courfeyrac yesterday.

“Do you mind if we take a detour?” Jehan asks when they pass a cathedral. He disagrees with a lot of things in Catholic theology, but he’s always admired their architecture.

Courf stops and looks around. “You mean the church?” he asks.

Jehan nods, already heading to the steep steps. When he was fourteen, his family had gone to Europe for the summer, and Jehan had fallen in love with old cathedrals and churches. He toured as many of them as he could, often spending hours inside while his parents were site-seeing elsewhere. He loved just sitting in the silence, just feeling and contemplating and centering himself. When he was seventeen, he spent a week in France with his parents and had been eager to return to some of his favorite churches, but his dad wouldn’t let him go inside any of them. He’d found out Jehan was gay the previous year and even though his father was (and still is) agnostic, he told Jehan that it would be sacrilegious to step inside those holy structures because “God hates fags.”

Jehan still hasn’t quite forgiven his dad for that one yet.

Courf takes the steps two at a time to catch up with him. “I didn’t know you were religious,” he says, pulling open the heavy wooden door to allow Jehan to step inside.

“I prefer to think of myself as a spiritual person rather than a religious one,” he says softly. The cathedral is empty, though Jehan is certain there’s a priest around here somewhere. As it is, the building is quiet and still and feels like the sanctuary it was designed to be. Jehan hasn’t felt this kind of stillness in his life in months.

He’s missed it.

Off to the side, candles flicker around the altars of saints and a crucifix looms over them from above the altar. He’s always been fascinated by different Christian depictions of Jesus even though he’s not sure if he believes in the divinity of Jesus at all, but he finds the Catholic depiction of a suffering Jesus particularly interesting. He finds the juxtaposition of suffering and redemption is fascinating.

He takes a seat in a pew in the back where he has a good view of the stained glass windows, even though it’s dark so the windows loose some of their majesty.

Courf takes a seat next to him. “So why spiritual rather than religious?” he asks.

“I’ve got a lot of issues with most organized religions,” he says. “Too many of them use messages of love as weaponns of hate, and I don’t like that. And all of them claim that they _are_ truth, implying that everyone else is wrong, but I don’t think you can own truth like that. Truth is everywhere and God is in everything. You can’t just claim that everyone else’s experience with God is invalid just because it doesn’t match with your own.”

“And for people who don’t believe in God?” Courf asks. “What about their experiences?”

“You forget that Grantaire has been my best friend for the better part of five years now,” he says. “I don’t discount his experiences or beliefs and I know why he doesn’t believe in God, but just because someone else is convinced that God is just a figment of my imagination doesn’t mean he is or that the way I choose to believe is delusional. I think we all have the right to believe—or not believe—according to the dictates of our own conscience, and for Grantaire that means not believing and for me it means having a deep and personal well of faith. I don’t talk about it much, but I think I’ve always believed in God and I’ve always believed that he has a presence in my life.”

Courf looks at him like he’s just uncovered a delightful secret.  “So why did we detour at a Catholic church? Do you come here often or do you just like churches?”

“I just like churches,” he says. “Especially ones with beautiful architecture like this. People build churches and places of worship as houses for God and I like that some people take extra care to make these houses beautiful. I think God appreciates beauty. Besides, I think it’s easier to feel closer to God in spaces that people treat as sacred. It’s easy to not feel so alone here.”

Courfeyrac takes his hand and gives it a squeeze, as though silently reassuring Jehan that he’s not alone.

Jehan smiles at him and they sit in silence for a few minutes. He doesn’t know what Courf thinks of in these moments, but Jehan turns his thoughts to God and gives thanks for the people in his life who love and support him.

“Come on,” he says after a while, nudging Courf towards the aisle. “We have a schedule to keep, don’t we?”

He follows Courfeyrac out of the cathedral and Courfeyrac leads him down a couple more blocks. He lets Courfeyrac steer their conversation and they talk about their friends and the upcoming school semester, and eventually the conversation devolves into an aimless debate about waffles versus pancakes and Jehan’s not really sure which side he’s supposed to be arguing for anymore, so he just tries to counter whatever Courfeyrac says. He loves it when he can make Courf laugh…and he’s almost startled to find himself laughing right along with him.

They reach an alley and Courfeyrac steers him down it. “This way,” he says.

“My Christmas gift is in an alley?” he asks.

“Close your eyes,” Courf says. His smile lights up his whole face and the expression is contagious. Jehan feels a sort of lightness in his chest that he can only assume is associated with carefreeness.

“I can see the building from here,” Jehan says.

“Just close your eyes,” he says. “I’m taking you in the back way and I’m technically not supposed to be here at all.”

Jehan groans but closes his eyes and allows Courf to pull him along. “We’re going to get arrested for trespassing, aren’t we?”

“Nothing so dramatic,” he says.

Courfeyrac takes him by the shoulders and steers him through a door and what seems to be some sort of indoor maze. He instructs Jehan where there are stairs or puddles—why are there puddles inside to begin with?—and laughs only a little when Jehan stumbles and trips over himself because of Courfeyrac’s poor directions. Courf stills him in the middle of…somewhere and takes a step back, letting go of his shoulders.

“I’m just turning on the light—”

“We’ve been doing this in the dark?” he says, turning towards Courf’s voice though he doesn’t open his eyes.

“Oh hush,” Courfeyrac says. “There’s enough light for me to see where I’m going—but not enough for you to appreciate your gift properly. So just stay put for a moment.”

Even with his eyes closed, he can tell the exact moment when the lights turn on and he can hear Courfeyrac walk back to him.

“Okay,” Courfeyrac says. “You can open your eyes now.”

When he opens his eyes, it takes a few moments before his adjust to what he’s seeing, but once he can take it all in, his jaw drops. As cliché as it is, his jaw actually drops and he turns in a slow circle to take in all of what he’s seeing.

Flowers.

Everywhere.

Big, colorful tropical blooms down to little tiny vines that creep around trellises and blossom into flowers smaller than his fingernails. It’s an absolute riot of color and he feels almost overwhelmed at the barrage to his senses—the colors, the scent, the humid warmth. He’s practically breathless. He knows most people—everyone, really—don’t understand his obsession with flowers and gardening. He knows people write it off as just another eccentricity and he rarely bothers to correct them because how do you explain to someone that you surround yourself with this kind of beauty to keep the darkness at bay?

He turns back to Courf, who’s leaning against a table of flowers, smiling sheepishly at him.

“How did you—I don’t—how?”

“I pulled some strings and called in some favors,” he says. “Do you like it then? I wanted to do something nice for you, but I didn’t want to get you something that you’d take home because, well, I didn’t really know how your boyfriend would handle that and so I guess I just wanted to bring something to you that would cheer you up.” He glances at his feet like he’s bashful then looks back up. “Do you like it, then?”

“I love it,” Jehan breathes. His eyes burn like they’re fighting back tears and there’s a strange sort of pressure in his chest and is he crying?

Courfeyrac sees the way his shoulders shake and closes the distance between them, pulling Jehan into a hug. “I wouldn’t have done this if I’d known you were going to cry about it.”

Jehan shakes his head because he’s at a complete loss of words to describe what this means to him, what this makes him feel. Courf holds onto him until Jehan pulls back a little, but even then, he keeps a hand on Jehan’s arm as though to steady him or offer him support. His breath catches a little when he looks at Courfeyrac and he wishes he could find the words to tell Courfeyrac exactly how he feels right now. But for all the poems he’s ever written and for all the pretty words he’s penned, he doesn’t have words for this. He can’t articulate the solace Courfeyrac has been to him, can’t express the gratitude that warms his whole body whenever he looks on Courf. No matter how cold and empty and alone he feels with Mont these days, Courfeyrac always manages to drive away all the hurt and all the loneliness.

Instead of searching for words he knows he won’t find, Jehan leans back in, brushing his lips against Courfeyrac’s, and he hesitates when Courf seems to stiffen against him, but then Courf melts into him, deepening the kiss. It’s a quiet kiss—not full of fireworks and passion the way popular media says kisses should be—but it’s no less powerful, no less binding. It’s gravity, pulling the two of them together and holding them there. It’s solace and comfort and tenderness. But then Courf’s breath hitches and Jehan pulls away, something terrible rearing up in his chest now that the moment has broken.

What has he done? How could he have—?

“Sorry,” Jehan says, stumbling back, pressing his hand to his lips. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Courf, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—shit, Courf, I’m sorry.”

Courfeyrac’s hands are on his shoulders, steadying him. “What are you sorry for?” he asks.

He anchors Jehan, but he can’t fix the awfulness in his chest.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he says. Words tumble from his lips like rain from the heavens and now that the storm has broken, he can’t pull it back in. “I’m sorry. I know how you feel about me—I shouldn’t have—I’m just so _lonely_ and I can’t—I just wanted to be close to someone—and I shouldn’t have—I didn’t meant to take advantage of you, Courf, that’s inexcusable, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—and I love him, I do, but I just feel so empty and I don’t know if I can do this anymore but I shouldn’t have kissed you, I shouldn’t have done that—how could I be so stupid? Courf, I’m sorry, I—”

Courf bundles him back into a hug, one hand rubbing circles against his back—gently, as though he knows exactly how many bruises he’s hiding under his oversized sweater—and one hand cupping the back of his head, holding him against Courfeyrac’s shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, he just holds on and doesn’t complain about the snot that Jehan’s sure he’s getting on his coat.

He shouldn’t be breaking down like this. He shouldn’t be burdening Courf with his drama. He shouldn’t lose control. He shouldn’t have let his life turn into a great big clusterfuck in the first place. How could he have let things get this far? If he weren’t such a fuck up himself—

When did he start sounding like his dad?

Courfeyrac holds onto him until the sobs have stopped and he doesn’t act like he’s going to let go until Jehan pulls back first. He wipes at his face with the sleeve of his sweater.

“Sorry,” he says, looking at his feet. He can’t stand the thought of looking at Courf right now. “Sorry. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

But Courf takes hold of his hands and squeezes them. “Jehan, I am here for you for whatever you need,” he says. “So if that’s taking you out and cheering you up for a bit or holding onto you because you can’t hold yourself together—I’m happy to do either, Jehan. More than happy. Don’t apologize to me. It’s okay. I promise.”

Jehan nods and forces himself to take deep, steadying breaths even though he feels completely unsteady. “We should be going,” he says. Mont will be waiting for him.

Shit. Mont.

What sort of shitty boyfriend is he that he goes around kissing other men like this? Things have been strained between him and Mont, yes, but Mont doesn’t deserve this, not even a little.

Courf puts his hand on Jehan’s back and steers him toward the exit. Courf is silent on their trek, and somewhere in his mind—somewhere where he still has the capacity to process these details—he finds Courf’s silence odd. Odd to have silence instead of the normal stream of comfort that Courf normally gives so easily and so freely and it feels like maybe they’ve just reached a depth of something that even Courf can’t cope with.

And that makes him feel worse. On top of having used Courf like he just did—he won’t lie to himself, he won’t pretend that it was fair of him to put Courf in that situation without being in a position to reciportcate those feelings, nevermind that that was the most alive he’s felt all month—he’s also dragged Courf into tangled web of heart break and pain. He never meant to hurt Courf.

Not that his intentions really mean anything at this point because it doesn’t matter that he didn’t meant to hurt Courf and it doesn’t matter that he didn’t mean to cheat on Mont because he did both with one kiss. One beautiful, perfect kiss.

And, shit, Mont is going to kill him for this—or kill Courf, which would be worse because Courf was only trying to help. He’s going to have to lie. He hates lying, but he doesn’t really have a choice at this point.

How could he have been so stupid?

Once they’re outside, Jehan pulls away, stumbling toward the nearest gutter where he promptly throws up everything he’s eaten tonight—which, admittedly, is not much. He drops to his knees and bows over the gutter, not caring what this looks like to anyone else, but his stomach is churning too much and fear and guilt wage war for dominance in his chest, neither one winning out, and he leans forward, retching again.

In a vacant corner of his mind, he feels Courf rubbing circles on his back and holding his hair out of his face and murmuring nonsense comfort words.

Jehan wipes his mouth against the back of his hand and wishes that he had something to rinse his mouth out with. He settles for spitting in the gutter.

“Are you okay?” Courfeyrac asks. His eyes are wide in the darkness and filled with concern.

He forces himself to nod, even though he still feels wretched. “I just—nerves, I guess,” he mutters.

Courfeyrac helps him to his feet. “Let’s get you home,” he says. “We can call a cab.”

Courf flags down a cab for them and sits right next to him on the ride back to the apartment. He keeps his arm around Jehan’s shoulders the entire time.

“Let me walk you up,” Courfeyrac says when they arrive. “You’re trembling like a leaf.”

“No,” Jehan says. “I—no. Is that okay?”

Courfeyrac hesitates before slumping back in his seat. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s okay.” He pulls out his wallet and hands Jehan two twenties. “Cab fare,” he explains, “just in case you need to get out. I don’t want you to be stranded just because you don’t have any money on you.”

“Courf, I can’t take this—”

“Please,” Courfeyrac says. “I’ll feel better knowing you have it.”

He curls his fingers around the money and shoves it into his pocket. He takes his time going up stairs, trying to compose himself, trying to piece himself back together as best he can. When he lets himself in, he finds that Mont has been waiting for him in the living room.

“You’re back early,” Montparnasse says. His face is cold and panic spikes in Jehan’s chest because what if he _knows_ —no. No. He can’t know. He and Courfeyrac were alone.

Montparnasse can’t know.

“I’m not feeling well,” Jehan says. He folds his arms across his chest and stuffs his hands under his arms to keep them from shaking. “Thought I’d come back early and maybe go to bed.” He tries to move around Mont to get to their bedroom. Or maybe the bathroom. He can lock the bathroom door and bunker down in there until he’s feeling a bit more like himself.

But Mont doesn’t let him pass.

“Maybe you wouldn’t be feeling so poorly if you hadn’t lied to me.”

He freezes. His stomach seizes. He’d puke again if there was anything left in his stomach. “What?”

“You thought I wouldn’t know?”

“No,” he says, breathless. “No, I wouldn’t lie—I didn’t lie, Mont—”

“I know you weren’t out with Grantaire tonight,” he says. “I called his cell phone to check on you. He had no idea that you two had plans tonight.”

No. Nonono. Grantaire would cover for him. Grantaire would lie for him. Grantaire wouldn’t do this to him. “I don’t—it wasn’t—it was nothing, Mont—”

“Nothing?” Montparnasse asks. “You wouldn’t have lied to me if it were nothing.”

“Mont, love, I swear—”

Mont grabs a fistful of his hair, yanking on it hard enough that Jehan hisses. Mont claims his mouth in a kiss. It’s everything that his kiss with Courfeyrac was not. “If it was nothing, why do I taste another man on your lips?”

“Mont, please—”

Mont lets go of his hair and shoves him back a step.

Back towards the door. He still has the door. He can reach the door and Courf gave him cab fare and he still has the spare key to Courf’s apartment in his pocket—he never leaves without it—and he bolts.

He’ll be safe with Courf.

He’s at the door when Mont seizes him around the waist and pulls him away before throwing him to the ground. He’s breathless for a moment but tries to get his feet back under him. He’ll fight his way through the door, he will. He’ll get out. He’ll get out.

Mont’s boot catches him near the ribs. “Stay the fuck down,” he growls. He turns back to the door and locks it. “You’re not going anywhere, you little shit.”

Jehan’s pleas and prayers for this all to end fall on deaf ears.  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! My move across the country was successful and I have landed myself in a place of mostly-consistent internet connection. There was much rejoicing!
> 
> Anyway, thank you all for the comments/kudos/well-wishes/etc. Last week was super hectic for me, but you guys kept it from getting too bad :) For interested parties, I think I am going to start up a writing blog. It'll probably take me a few weeks to find a blogging platform that gives me all the functionality I want and get everything set up, but once it's up and running, I'll be sure to give you all the link :)
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday


	51. Chapter Fifty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New Year's Eve at Courfeyrac's apartment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise Friday Chapter! See end notes for an explanation for why this Friday chapter happened and a discussion on the continued existence of Friday chapters.

Grantaire spends most of his time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve at work. It’s a menial, barely-above-minimum-wage job at an art supply store, but the hours are flexible and he gets discounts on everything in the store. His supervisor lets him set his own hours and he manages to convince his boss that the store really should be open all day on New Year’s Eve when really he just wants the money and the distraction inventorying supplies will give him from one of the biggest drinking holidays of the year.

He knows Courfeyrac is hosting a bit of a party for everyone at his apartment but he’s not exactly planning on going because watching everyone else get shit-faced when he’s still trying to scrape by with one lousy drink a day doesn’t sound like a good time. As he’s closing up the shop—his boss having left the store in Grantaire’s mostly capable hands for the entire day so she could spend time with her family—he gets a text from Eponine.

**Eponine:** _You’re coming to courf’s when you get off work, right?_

**Grantaire:** _Closing up now, then going home_

**Eponine _:_** _Change of plans. You’re coming. Text Jehan while you’re at it. The pair of you are the only ones not here_

He frowns a little at that. He hasn’t heard much from Jehan in the last week, and while he wants to believe that no news means good news, he knows that that very well might not be the case in this situation. No news might just mean that Montparnasse snoops on Jehan’s phone. No news might also mean that Jehan’s in no condition to be texting or talking to anyone.

**Grantaire:** _I’ll text Jehan, but I’m not coming. Don’t really want to spend the night watching everyone else get drunk_

**Eponine:** _Family friendly party. All the drinks are virgin. Courf says it’s for Gav and Zelma (and Marius, who’s only twenty, did you know that???) but it’s even money that it’s for you too. No getting drunk here tonight. Come. We all want you here_

Grantaire doesn’t respond, but continues the nightly routine to close up shop. Eponine texts him again a few minutes later.

**Eponine:** _Unless you want to miss Enjolras totally losing his shit over Mario kart of all things, you should get your ass up here pronto_

She follows up that message with a picture of Enjolras and Combeferre, both red-faced and holding N64 controllers, shouting at the TV.

**Grantaire:** _keep your hair on. I’ll be there in ten._

Courfeyrac’s apartment isn’t too far from Grantaire’s work, and on his walk over, he texts Jehan.

**Grantaire _:_** _Hey, haven’t heard from you in a while, but I just wanted to check if you were coming to Courfeyrac’s party tonight. Eponine says it’s a good time and apparently they’re having a Mario Kart tourney. Let me know if you need a ride or anything. We’ll get something sorted for you if you need it._

He’s not surprised when Jehan doesn’t text him back, but he sighs anyway and pockets his phone. If he hasn’t heard from Jehan by tomorrow, he’ll swing by his and Montparnasse’s apartment to check on him. Grantaire is sure that there’s a fine line between behavior Montparnasse will find acceptable and overbearing, and Grantaire intends to flirt the shit out of that line until he knows that Jehan is okay.

When he knocks on Courfeyrac’s door a few minutes later, he’s greeted with a loud chorus of _Come in_ and as soon as he opens the door, he’s greeted with...something that smells rather like burning rubber.

“Holy shit, what is that smell?” he asks, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. Everyone is gathered in Courfeyrac’s living room, and Gavroche, Bahorel, Musichetta, and Marius (who’s wearing a sweater that matches Cosette’s) are all sitting on the floor with N64 controllers in hand, completely immersed in the game, though Marius looks up sheepishly at him.

“It’s sauerkraut and pork,” he says, blanching when he looks back at the TV to see that he’s fallen into last place.  Cosette, sitting behind him, pats him on the head. “You’re supposed to eat it on New Year’s to bring luck.”

“I’m not eating anything that smells like that,” Grantaire says.

“That’s what I said,” Eponine mutters.

“Oh, come on,” Marius says. “It’s tradition!”

“A very smelly tradition,” Courfeyrac says before turning his attention to Grantaire. “You can leave your coat that chair right there—it’s the closest I’ve got to a coat rack, don’t judge—and we’ve got food that doesn’t stink up the apartment in the kitchen and drinks. If you want something fancy, Chetta’s been making mocktails for us all night, but you’ll have to wait till after this round of Mario Kart.”

“No worries,” Grantaire says, depositing his coat, “I know my way around mixing drinks.”

He waits for some jibe about how of course the alcoholic knows about mixing drinks, but it never comes. While he loads up a plate of food in the kitchen, Feuilly shows him the tournament brackets they have set up for Mario Kart.

“Gavroche played your first round for you,” he says. “Do you know if Jehan’s coming? We’ve got him slotted for the next round, but if he’s not going to show up, we’ll find a way around it.”

“I texted him on my way over,” Grantaire says, “but he never responded.”

“He still hanging around that asswipe of a boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s not much I wouldn’t do at this point to see that creep in prison,” he says. “I’ve spent half the holiday trying to talk Bahorel out of hunting down the bastard and putting him in the hospital.”

Grantaire looks up from his plate. He knew that everyone was concerned, of course, but it was one thing to know that and another thing to hear someone talking about attempting to put Montparnasse in the hospital. “I didn’t realize he was that upset about it.”

“Of course he’s upset,” Feuilly says. “We’re all upset. Jehan’s our friend, and hell, even if he weren’t, I’d still be upset. No one deserves being treated like that.”

“I’ll try texting him again,” Grantaire says, having to practically shout over the sound of Bahorel swearing as Marius overtakes him in the last lap and ousts him from the tournament.

“Sorry, sorry!” Marius says while Eponine scolds Bahorel not to swear in front of Gavroche (which makes both Gavroche and Grantaire snort because they know he’s heard worse before). “I didn’t mean to beat you!”

“Beating him is kind of the point,” Courfeyrac says, taking the controller from him. “So up next is Joly and Enjolras and Cosette and…and Jehan, right?”

It’s impossible to miss the look of concern on Courfeyrac’s face at the fact that Jehan’s still not here.

“Can I play for Jehan like I did for Grantaire?” Gavroche asks.

“Yeah, sure, kid,” Courfeyrac says, ruffling his hair a little.

Grantaire takes the seat on the couch that Cosette just vacated, which places him right behind Enjolras who seems to treat this video game with the same somberness and dedication that he does everything else in his life.

Eponine leans in next to him. “You’ll enjoy this,” she says. “Apparently New Year’s Eve is the only time they let Enjolras play video games because he gets way too into it. Ferre told me that he and Courfeyrac got into a huge fight about a Super Smash Brothers tournament their freshman year and didn’t talk to each other for a week.”

Musichetta posits herself on Bossuet’s lap. “He’s completely oblivious once the game starts,” she says with a smile.

“I can hear you all, you know,” Enjolras says, sitting up a little straighter.

“Not for long,” Bossuet says.

Sure enough, once the race starts, Enjolras is completely oblivious to everyone else in the room and he when Joly launches a blue shell at him in the second lap, he starts swearing so violently that Grantaire’s not entirely sure that he hasn’t been possessed.  In the second of the four races, Musichetta procures a small bag filled with tiny colored rubber bands that she seems to have brought for this very purpose and she and Eponine set to work on doing Enjolras hair into dozens of mini ponytails.

Not to be left out of the “let’s play with Enjolras’s hair” party, Grantaire takes Eponine’s place when she excuses herself to the kitchen and he starts doing Enjolras’s hair into tiny braids, which Jehan taught him to do years ago. When he’s being completely honest with himself, he admits that he might be a little obsessed with Enjolras’s hair, which is hardly surprising because there’s very little about Enjolras that he _hasn’t_ fixated on at some point, but this is the first time he’s ever touched, and now that he has, he’s not sure he ever wants to stop.

“Shit, Enjolras,” he says, tying off a braid with one of Musichetta’s rubber bands (with considerable less finesse than the girls). “Your hair is so thick I could paint with it.”

Enjolras finishes the race—second place, just behind Cosette who’s remarkably good—and a moment later seems to process what Grantaire said. “Wait, what?” he asks.

Grantaire can feel his face flushing. “Nothing,” he says.

Enjolras leans back against the couch and tries to run his hand through his hair, only to have the progress impeded by tiny pony tails. “What the hell did you do to my hair?” he demands.

Everyone is too busy laughing to explain to him exactly what happened and when Enjolras tries to undo the ponytails, all he manages to do is tangle his hair in the rubber bands.

“That’s what scissors are for,” Grantaire says, taking pity on him and pulling his hand away from his hair before he does permanent damage.

Enjolras looks mortified. “Scissors?” he squawks. “You’re not cutting my hair.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he says. “I was talking about cutting the rubber bands.”

Looking pacified, Enjolras nods. “Courf’s got scissors in the kitchen.”

Courfeyrac, Eponine, and Combeferre have already gathered in the kitchen, and Enjolras takes one look at Courfeyrac, before asking, “Something the matter?”

Grantaire watches the silent conversation pass between Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras, not for the first time wondering how they manage it, before Courfeyrac sighs and slumps against the counter.

“It’s going on eleven, now,” he says. “And none of us have heard from Jehan.”

“He could have other plans,” Eponine points out.

“He would have said if he had other plans,” Grantaire says. “I heard from him a few days ago and he mentioned he was planning on coming.”

If anything, Courfeyrac looks more stricken by that.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Eponine says. She actually sounds like she believes her words, but Grantaire knows better. Eponine is a master at lying to give comfort.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Courfeyrac says.

More nonverbal communication passes between Combeferre and Enjolras.

“Did something happen?” Enjolras asks.

Courfeyrac drags his hand through his hair and sighs. “Jehan kissed me,” he says.

Had Grantaire been drinking anything, he would have spit it out and there’s a beat of silence before Eponine whacks Courfeyrac in the gut.

“You kissed him?” she says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“No,” Courfeyrac says. “ _He_ kissed _me_.”

“He…what?” Grantaire asks.

“He kissed me,” Courfeyrac says again. “Day after Christmas—I took him to the botantical gardens, you know? Just a sort of non-Christmas present. Anyway, we were talking or whatever and he was thanking me, and next thing I know, he’s kissing me—and then he pulls away and he’s practically crying and apologizing to me. He’s lonely—really lonely. Doesn’t really feel connected to anyone, and I guess that’s why he kissed me? I don’t know.” He pauses, chewing on his lip. “You don’t think Montparnasse found out, do you?”

Grantaire feels his stomach twist because he remembers the call he got from Montparnasse on the night after Christmas. Montparnasse was under the impression that Jehan was out with him, and Grantaire wasn’t going to throw Jehan under the bus by telling Montparnasse the truth, so he lied and said that Jehan was with him but was in the bathroom and that he’d try to remember to tell Jehan to call him back when he got out.

But if Jehan was with Courfeyrac that night, and Montparnasse found out… “Shit,” he says. “Parnasse would kill him if he found out.”

Courfeyrac actually flinches and Eponine whacks Grantaire this time. “Not helping, R,” she says.

“But it’s not like Jehan would tell Montparanasse what happened,” Combeferre says reasonably. “I’m sure he’s okay, Courf.”

“Really?” Courfeyrac says bitterly. “You’re sure? Because I’m not sure of that at all. If Montparnasse did anything because Jehan kissed me—it makes me feel sick. I can’t—”

Courfeyrac is cut off by the sound of the door opening, which is shortly followed by Gavroche exclaiming, “Parnasse! I didn’t know you were coming to this!”

Grantaire exchanges a quick glance with Eponine before hurrying out of the kitchen, everyone else hot on his heels. In the living room, Montparnasse lingers by the door, his arm wrapped possessively around Jehan’s shoulders. Jehan looks…small. Split lip and a healing black eye. His body is stiff like he’s in pain. His face is a little too thin, his expression a little too pinched. Behind Grantaire, Courfeyrac makes a noise like a wounded animal, but when Grantaire turns to look at him, he’s smiling.

It’s a forced smile, but he’s smiling. “I was wondering if you guys were going to show up before next year,” he says.

Enjolras, his hair still done up in dozens of ponytails and braids, puts his hand on Courfeyrac’s shoulder, and Grantaire’s not sure if it’s for comfort or to keep his temper in check.

Jehan gives him a flickering smile. “We—I—”

Montparnasse cuts him off. “This one slowed us down,” he says, giving Jehan’s shoulders a little squeeze.

“Sorry,” Jehan says, ducking his head.

For a long moment, no one in the room seems to move. It’s hard not to stare at the injuries on Jehan’s face and harder to fight the urge to shove Montparnasse away from him, and from the looks of it, everyone else in the room feels the same way. Jehan looks skittish, like he’s terrified someone will ask what happened and like he’d rather be anywhere else than in Courfyerac’s living room with all of his friends starting at him.

Musichetta is the one to break the tension when she pushes herself off the couch and takes Jehan’s hand to lead him further toward the kitchen. Grantaire is half-convinced that the only reason Montparnasse allows it is because Chetta is a girl and therefore no threat to his relationship. Grantaire and the others step aside to let the two of them into the kitchen.

“Let’s get you both something to drink,” she says with forced levity.

Once Musichetta has broken the tension, everyone else tries hard to relax and not make a scene. Grantaire follows Courfeyrac into the kitchen to ask about scissors for Enjolras’s hair.

As Musichetta mixes a drink for Jehan, she asks in a soft voice, “Do you need ice or anything for that black eye, love? Joly can take a look at it, if you want.”

“No, that’s okay,” Jehan says, taking the drink from her. “It was my own fault anyway.”

Courfeyrac actually growls at that, his hand closing around the handle of a pair of scissors and for a fraction of a second, Grantaire actually thinks that Courfeyrac might actually try to attack Montparnasse with them.

But Combeferre appears at Courfeyrac’s side and takes the scissors from him, passing them off to Grantaire. “Now isn’t the time,” Combeferre says in a low voice. “Making a scene will only make things worse for Jehan.”

Courfeyrac doesn’t look entirely convinced and turns away when Montparnasse edges closer to Jeahn, as though he can’t even bear the sight of them together. Not that Grantaire can blame him for those feelings, because it’s not as though he puts up much of a fight when Enjolras prods him back into the living room.

Grantaire settles down near Enjolras and starts to snip the rubberbands out of his hair and he can hear Montparnasse complain loudly from the kitchen about the lack of booze. He’s grateful that Combeferre is still in there with Courfeyrac because Courfeyrac needs a calming influence right now, and while Combeferre might be a scary bastard sometimes, he’s always calm about it.

Cosette makes room on the couch for Jehan when he emerges alone from the kitchen and she pats the cushion for him to sit down. “How’d you get that black eye?” she asks kindly

Jehan doesn’t make eye contact as he speaks. “It’s stupid, really,” he says. “I got sick right after Christmas and I was in the shower and got overheated. I barely made it out of the shower before I passed out—because of the fever and the heat, you know?”

Mont comes out of the kitchen with a can of Coke, but he’s smirking and Grantaire wants to knock the expression off his face. He wonders if Montparnasse coached Jehan on that answer the way his dad used to do with him. “Nearly broke his head on the toilet,” Montparnasse says. “It was a good thing I was on my way back home, or who knows what would have happened?”

“Yeah,” Eponine says icily. “Good thing.”

The hour passes and Grantaire is surprised that the worst anyone does to Montparnasse is give him dirty looks. The girls do their best to keep Jehan occupied and Eponine in particular makes sure that Jehan and Montparnasse are never left alone together. For the most part, Montparnasse tolerates it. Grantaire lingers nearby, wanting to stand with Eponine as another layer of defense between Jehan and Montparnasse, but Parnasse scowls whenever Grantaire—or any of the other guys, for that matter—get too near Jehan.

Montparnasse takes over for Jehan in the Mario Kart tournament, which Jehan swears up and down is fine and that he’s happy to let his boyfriend play in his stead. While Montparnasse is distracted, though, Grantaire slips closer to Jehan. Up close, his injuries look even worse. The left side of his face is nearly covered in a fading yellow bruise and, judging from the coloring of Jehan’s black eye, Grantaire guesses that it’s only in the last day or two that the swelling went down enough for Jehan to open see out of both eyes at all. When Jehan brushes his hair to the side, he exposes bruises around his neck. Grantaire knows from experience what sort of bruises are likely to be found under Jehan’s oversized sweater.

“How are you holding up?” he asks Jehan, quiet enough that Montparnasse isn’t likely to hear him over Bahorel’s competitive growling.

Jehan shrugs. His gaze keeps straying across the room to Courfeyrac, who’s sitting on the floor, wedged between Enjolras and Combeferre who both seem to be devoting their energy to keep him from causing a scene.

If Grantaire didn’t worry about what causing a scene would mean for Jehan, he’d be right there with Courfeyrac in kicking Montparnasse out of the apartment.

“Courf told me,” Grantaire says. “About what happened after Christmas.”

“You talked to him?” Jehan asks, tearing his gaze away from Courfeyrac.  “Is he doing okay? I still feel like I should apologize, but I don’t think it’s safe to talk to him right now.”

“Has Parnasse threatened him?” Grantaire asks.

Jehan shakes his head, turning his attention back to Courfeyrac. “It’s just…it’s not safe.”

Grantaire doesn’t push the matter and a moment later, Jehan turns back to him.

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

“Anything,” Grantaire says.

“Did Mont call you?” His voice is timid, like he’s afraid of the answer he might get. “The night after Christmas?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says. “He was looking for you. He was under the impression that we were hanging out together.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him that we were out drinking and that you were in the bathroom puking and if I remembered by the time you got out, I’d have you call him back but that I’d already had a few drinks and I was likely to forget.”

Jehan nearly wilts with relief and Grantaire wonders that Montparnasse told him about that phone call. “I shouldn’t have put you in that position,” Jehan says, “but I couldn’t think what else to tell him that wouldn’t make him suspicious and when he said that you told him that I wasn’t with you—I didn’t want to believe him, but I couldn’t think of how else he’d know.”

“Know?” Grantaire asks. “Does he know about you and Courf and the…?”

“I don’t think he knows it was Courf,” he says, which explains why he’s been keeping his distance all night. “But yeah. He knows.”

“Shit, Jehan,” he says. “I’m sor—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Jehan says quickly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s my fault. I know things are bad, but I still love him and I shouldn’t have been kissing someone else when…when we’re still together.”

“You don’t honestly think that a single kiss justifies _this_ , do you?” he says, gesturing to Jehan’s visible injuries. “Jehan, you could have fucked everyone in this room and still not deserve getting the shit beat out of you.”

“Can we not talk about it?” Jehan says. “Please?”

Grantaire sighs. “Whatever makes you comfortable.”

Jehan offers up a flickering smile and says, “Thank you.”

When midnight rolls around, the couples in the room gather to exchange kisses—although Montparnasse takes it as an invitation to tug Jehan into his lap and shove his tongue down Jehan’s throat and Grantaire can’t watch. He just can’t.

Feeling sick, he retreats into the kitchen only to find that he’s not alone. Courfeyrac is in there already, fumbling with a bottle of vodka, trying to get it open. He looks sick himself and more than a little heartbroken and Grantaire can’t blame him for wanting to find the oblivion at the bottom of the bottle. The more Courfeyrac struggles with the bottle, the more frustrated he gets and he looks like he’s about to cry and Grantaire knows those bottles, knows that there’s a trick about twisting your wrist in just the right way to get the cap off. He wants to take the bottle from Courfeyrac—save him the trouble and help him on his way to forgetting the way Montparnasse was carrying on with Jehan in the other room—but he doesn’t want to get that close to an open bottle. He probably wants oblivion as much as Courfeyrac does at this point.

Torn between the twin desires of staying sober and getting so shit-faced drunk that he forgets his own name, he’s saved by the arrival of Combeferre and Enjolras.

“Jehan just left,” Combeferre says, stepping forward and taking the bottle of vodka from Courfeyrac. “He wanted to thank you for inviting him and said that he’d stay, but they’re supposed to meet up with some of Montparnasse’s friends.”

“Fuck,” Courfeyrac says. His voice breaks over the single syllable word and Combeferre just gathers Courfeyrac into his arms and gives him something to hold onto.

Enjolras, still standing awkwardly in the door way looking like he wants to help though he’s unsure how, turns to Grantaire. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Normally, Grantaire would lie. He’s an expert liar, especially when it comes to questions about how “okay” he is, but right now he doesn’t have the heart for it. “No,” he says. “I’m not.”

Enjolras nods and puts his hand on Grantaire’s shoulder. It’s a small gesture but after months of watching how reserved Enjolras is with physical affection, Grantaire knows it’s worth and he’s grateful that he has it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends :) Thanks so much, as always, for your continued support of me and this story. You are all seriously the best.
> 
> As for the surprise Friday chapter, now that my life has calmed down a bit, I want to try to get back in the habit of posting twice a week like I used to. At this point, I still don't think I can post twice every week, so I'm planning on posting regularly on Tuesdays--as usual--and then on weeks when I'm on my game and everything is going well, posting an additional chapter on Friday. Sound like a plan? Everyone on board? Good, because it was going to happen whether or not you were on board haha.
> 
> Next chapter will be on Tuesday :)


	52. Chapter Fifty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan spends the day with Mont when he'd really rather be spending the day with just about anyone else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for gay and trans slurs and general relationship crappiness

It’s the first Tuesday after the New Year that Jehan and the others who were arrested back at the housing protest have their hearing. The hearing itself is mostly a formality. Apparently some combination of Courfeyrac and Enjolras and Professor Lamarque talked to the school administration and got them to drop most of the charges and Jehan is pretty certain that the most any of them is going to get is a fine and some community service hours.

But formality or not, Jehan shows up for the hearing on time and in a nice suit with his hair pulled back just like he’s expected to. Mont had made a joke or two about Jehan skipping bail—about how that would make his criminal record more impressive—but it's Mont who drives him to the court house this morning, so Jehan knows that Mont really is only joking about that.

Everyone else is already at the courthouse by the time Jehan arrives, all dressed in suits to make a good impression. Grantaire even went through the trouble of shaving and Enjolras keeps glancing at him but looking away abruptly before Grantaire can catch him looking. Courfeyrac—looking perfect in his own suit—gives Jehan a warm smile when he joins them in the court room. He knows that he doesn’t look quite as sharp as the others, but hopefully no one calls attention to it.

The bruises on his face still haven’t faded entirely yet—and he hates himself for it, not that it’s his fault that his body has always been slow to heal like this, but school started up the day before and he’s already had to field questions from concerned professors and curious students and there’s only so long he can force a laugh and lie about how spectacularly drunk he got on New Years and his subsequent fall down the stairs.

They all buy his lies, though. No one questions him beyond that.

Professor Lamarque, acting as their lawyer as a favor to Enjolras, gives Jehan the concerned professor look and there’s something like pity in Feuilly’s gaze and something more like anger in Bahorel’s and Jehan knows that the questions about Mont are coming because Mont isn’t with him right now, isn’t standing behind him, next to him, over him to scare off questions he doesn’t want to answer. And it’s not like his friends aren’t persistent, aren’t used to fighting to get what they want and he’s sure they want answers from him. Why do you put up with this? Why haven’t you left him? How come you stay with him?

He doesn’t have answers for them and he doesn’t have the words to tell them that.

The hearing itself is over just as quickly as Jehan anticipated it would be. A slap-on-the-wrist fine and fifty hours of community a service a piece. Courfeyrac and Bahorel laugh over the sentence after they leave the court room and it is amusing because most of them are already involved in community service and charity work so the court mandate doesn’t really change anything for them.

While Bahorel and Courfeyrac laugh—the sound of Courf’s laughter is warm and golden and Jehan could probably listen to that sound forever—Grantaire slings an arm around Jehan’s shoulder—it’s gentle, he notices, far more gentle than Grantaire normally is with him and for some reason that makes him a little annoyed, though he’s not entirely sure why.

“Do you have classes today?” Grantaire asks.

“I do,” he says. “But I’m skipping. It’s syllabus day. It’s not like I’m missing anything important.”

“Do you want to go grab a bite to eat? My treat.”

A few hours with Grantaire sound far too tempting. A few hours where he doesn’t have to tiptoe around Mont’s temper. But he can’t.

“Mont’s picking me up,” he says. He speaks quietly, trying not to draw the attention of the others. He doesn’t want to spark their questions.

Grantaire doesn’t question. “Ah,” he says. “Well, if you can get away for a few hours, let me know. My offer still stands.”

“Thanks.”

“Seriously, Jehan. I’m like the postal service, yeah? Rain, shine, sleet, snow. I’ll even do the middle of the night—if you need me, you only need to call. Do you—I’ve still got that prepaid cellphone if you need it.”

“I don’t need it,” he says.

“Okay,” Grantaire says. He leaves it at that.

He’s grateful that Grantaire doesn’t push and prod for more answers and information. Even though Jehan knows that Grantaire’s been struggling with his own issues during this whole debacle with Mont, Grantaire has been far kinder and more supportive than Jehan feels he deserves. When he and Mont argue, he takes comfort in the fact that Grantaire and Courfeyrac haven’t given up on him yet.

Courfeyrac waits for them by the exit. “We’re talking about going down to the Musain for some celebratory coffee,” he says. “You guys interested?”

“Mont’s waiting for me,” Jehan says. He doesn’t miss the way Courfeyrac’s expression tightens and he can fill in the thoughts that Courfeyrac must refuse to give voice to. He knows Courfeyrac’s been angry about all of this, but he appreciates the fact that Courfeyrac always tries to check his temper when Jehan’s around.

Outside, Mont waits for him across the street from the courthouse. He’s smoking a cigarette—Jehan hates it when Mont smokes, hates the smell even though most of his clothes reek of it now because Mont’s been smoking in their apartment since Christmas—and the smoke curls around him in the cold morning sunlight. He looks beautiful. Cold, and perhaps more than a little unfeeling, but that doesn’t make him look less beautiful. If anything, it might add to the beauty and Jehan wonders if he’s the only one who sees it. When Grantaire, when Courfeyrac, when any of his friends look at Mont, do they see the beauty or do they only see the bruises he’s caused?

But he’s always thought Mont was beautiful, ever since they met when Jehan was just a shaken boy of sixteen seeking a chemical release from the emotional pain caused by his father. He turns to wave goodbye to his friends—they’re framed in morning light as well and beautiful like Mont is, only warm, and it hurts his heart a little to leave them now—before hurrying across the street to Mont.

Mont is gentle when he pulls Jehan in for a kiss, his grip on Jehan’s waist guiding and protective rather than forceful and possessive. “How’d it go?” he asks.

Jehan smiles a little. “Easy,” he says. “Like I expected. Three hundred dollar fine and fifty hours community service.”

“Ah, that’s nothing,” Mont says. He’s parked down around the corner and he keeps an arm around Jehan’s shoulders as they walk. Jehan hates that it takes conscious effort not to pull away from him. “We’ll make a proper criminal of you yet.”

“I think I can go without the life of crime, if it’s all the same.”

Mont laughs. “When does the fine need to be paid by?”

“End of the week.”

“That’s plenty of time for me to scrounge up the money.”

Jehan turns to look at him. “You’re going to pay the fine?”

“Three hundred bucks isn’t that much, bird. It’s not like I can’t afford it. You don’t have a job and I’m not going to throw you to the wolves because of it. It’s fine. I’ve got it taken care of.”

“Oh. I just…well, I just figured I was going to have to ask my dad for the money—”

“You don’t have to ask that lousy piece of shit for anything,” Mont says. “I’ll take care of you.”

When they reach the car, Mont opens the passengers’ side door for him and gives him another kiss. “When we get home,” he says before he closes the door, “we’ll call up the guys and have a bit of a celebration for you.”

There’s no question as to who “the guys” are and Jehan’s stomach twists at the thought of having to spend the rest of the day in the company of Gueulemer and Babet and Claquesous, but he forces himself to smile because it’s dangerous to let Mont know how he’s really feeling. “Great,” he says.

He hopes he sounds sincere.

* * *

It’s after noon when Mont announces that they’re going to meet his friends at the little dive of a bar a few blocks down that Babet’s former brother-in-law owns. (Jehan made the mistake once of asking Babet what happened to his wife. Babet never gave him a straight answer, but the cold laughter he offered in lieu of an answer was deeply unsettling.) It’s early enough in the day that the bar is fairly empty—just a couple of unemployed alcoholics and the rest of Patron Minette with assorted guests. The girl that Claquesous has been dating on and off again for two years. A friend of Babet’s who fences a lot of their stolen goods. A girl who’s probably not any older than fifteen who comes in with Gueulemer.

Looking at the crowd, Jehan thinks he probably should have taken up Grantaire’s offer for lunch or Courfeyrac’s offer for coffee because these aren’t the sort of people he really feels comfortable with. While Mont talks business with Claquesous, Jehan debates if anyone would really notice if he slipped out. Grantaire did say that his offer was valid all day, and he suspects that Courfeyrac would meet him for a second round of coffee if he asked. He’s fiddling with his phone, trying to weigh the pros and cons of texting Grantaire to meet up with him, when Mont sidles up to him next to the bar and orders a beer for each of them.

“You gonna prop the bar up all day?” Mont asks. When the bartender slides him the drinks, he passes one to Jehan.

He takes it but doesn’t drink. He shrugs, not sure what the right answer to that question is.

Mont sighs and nods to the drink in Jehan’s hand. “Oh, come on, bird. Lighten up. You should be celebrating! You walked away from that ridiculous ass charge with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. We’ll get your fine paid by the end of the week and once they give you back the bail money, you can get your dad off your fucking back. Drink up!”

“I’ve got class tomorrow morning,” he says. “I really shouldn’t be drinking.”

“Yeah, like no one else goes to school hungover. Shit, if the school had a problem with that, they’d’ve kicked Grantaire’s ass out years ago.”

Jehan sighs, thinking this really isn’t something worth arguing with Mont over, and he takes a drink. Mont smiles at him, kisses him.

He must be in a good mood. He hasn’t been this relaxed in what feels like weeks. “C’mon,” he says. “Enough of your melancholy poet shit. I didn’t drag you out here for you to sit at the bar by yourself all day.”

He slings his arm over Jehan’s shoulders and steers him away from the bar and towards his friends, most of whom are spectacularly drunk already and Jehan wonders—not for the first time—how they ever get anything done if they spend their days getting shit-faced like this.

They manage to con a couple of the alcoholics into playing a game of poker and Jehan sits in Mont’s lap, practically playing for him because he’s always been a bit better at poker—for all of Mont’s calculating tendencies, he can get a little rash when playing with his friends—and he’s more sober than anyone else who’s playing, which gives him a clear advantage. If it weren’t for Mont’s too-tight grip on his waist, a grip that aggravates old bruises and makes him squirm whenever Mont’s hands clench, this would feel like their relationship used to feel.

But that’s not quite true, either, because there are other differences. Small signs that Mont’s affections aren’t what they used to be. When Jehan wins fifty bucks off Gueulemer and Guelemer calls him “a fucked-up tranny fag,” Mont doesn’t come to his defense and mostly Jehan just feels lonely. This old-but-not-quite-right Mont just makes him miss the way things used to be between them and he wonders if he could get Mont to leave with him now if they could go back to their place and just enjoy a nice night in. Hell, Jehan would drink or smoke whatever Mont puts in front of him if it’d help get him his old boyfriend back tonight.

The game ends with Jehan and Mont taking most of the money. Mont grabs a couple of bills off the table and tucks them in the front of Jehan’s jeans. “Go get us another round of drinks,” he says, slapping Jehan’s thigh.

“The bartender’s not going to sell me anything,” he says, getting off Mont’s lap. “I don’t even look as old as I am. He’s not going to believe that I’m twenty-one.”

Mont nods to Gueulemer’s girl who’s doing shots at the bar. “Don’t think the bartender really cares how old you are, bird,” he says. “Go on, now. There’s a good boy.”

He ignores the laughter of Mont’s friends and entertains the idea of just taking the money Mont just handed him and leaving, but Mont’s been in such a good mood today that he doesn’t want to ruin it. When he gets to the bar, he finds that the bartender has stepped out so he takes a seat and he waits.

It’s not thirty seconds later that the girl who came with Gueulemer sidles up to him. She looks even younger up close, with make-up done too heavily and hair dyed in a way that should be “edgy” but really just makes her look young and hurt and angry.

“I’m Roxy,” she says, leaning in close so that Jehan can see straight down her shirt.

Not that that does anything for him.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asks.

“I’m nineteen,” she says. “I graduated last year.”

“If you’re nineteen, then I’m the fucking pope,” Jehan says.

She laughs. “You’re funny.”

She puts her hand on his thigh and slides it up and in towards his groin.

“I’m also very gay,” he says, forcing her hand away.

“Ooooh,” she says. “You’re the faggot. Gueulemer told me about you.”

“I’m sure it was a glowing report,” he says dryly. He should have left when he had the chance.

“Gueulemer says that you must be really good at taking it up the ass because he can’t think of any other reason why Montparnasse would be interested in a boy instead of a real girl. And I mean, you must be _really_ good at it, because girls can take it up the ass too, and we can—”

“You know,” he says, interrupting her before she can get any further, “you’d probably be better off keeping your distance from Gueulemer. He’s not what anyone would call a nice person.”

When she laughs this time, the sound is derisive. “Oh, like you’re one to talk.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Gueulemer might be rough in bed, but at least he doesn’t knock me around whenever the hell he feels like it.”

He feels breathless, like he’s just been hit. Is everything between him and Mont really that obvious? “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you even hear yourself? Are you going to make excuses?” she sneers. “You gonna tell me that he’s really just a nice guy but he’s got a temper? It’s not his fault he hits you—you just got in the way? You sound just like my fucking mother.”

“And you can keep your fucking mouth shut,” he snaps, feeling almost sick with rage, but before he can say anything more, Mont is behind him, an arm around his waist, pulling him close.

“The little bitch giving you trouble, bird?” he asks. He hooks his chin over Jehan’s shoulder, and Jehan doesn’t need to look to know that he’s giving the girl a murderous look.

“It’s fine,” he says. He doesn’t think that Mont would have any qualms hitting this girl if he thought she were causing trouble, and he really doesn’t think that anyone else in here would defend her, either.

Mont’s arm tightens around his waist. “Looks like Gueulemer’s getting lonely over there,” he says coldly. “Why don’t you go do what he’s paying you for?” Once she’s gone, Mont nuzzles behind his ear before turning him around and pulling a joint out of his pocket. “Not worth letting some stupid little bitch get you all worked up,” Mont says, holding out the joint. “Take it. You look like you need to relax.”

He hasn’t smoked anything since Thanksgiving and he doesn’t want to give into that vice now. Instead of taking the joint, he sighs and looks up at Mont. “How about we just go?” he says. “I’m not enjoying myself here and you wanted to celebrate. We can celebrate at home.”

“You think my friends aren’t good enough for you?”

Shit. There goes Mont’s good mood. He can hear the change of temper in his voice. “No, that’s not it.”

“Then why are you so eager to get away?”

“I’m not. I just…I’m not enjoying myself and…and Grantaire mentioned wanting to get lunch or dinner or something. I feel like I haven’t seen him in ages.”

“Grantaire, hmm? You’d really rather spend your time with that miserable piece of shit drunk than me?” He leans in closer. “Or maybe you’re trying to meet up with that whore of a boy you made out with a few weeks ago. What’s his name—Courfeyrac? Is that right?”

 “I didn’t—”

“Don’t deny what you did, Jehan. It’s a cowardly thing to do. If you’re so eager to chase another piece of ass for a change, why don’t we call the little bitch back? I’m sure Gueulemer won’t mind sharing—and I know I wouldn’t mind watching the two of you put on a little show for the rest of us.”

He feels sick. “Mont, I—”

Abruptly, Mont starts laughing. “Shit, Jehan, lighten up. I was joking. Like you would even know what to do with a pussy!” He fishes a lighter out of his pocket and lights the joint in his hand. He takes a hit before passing it to Jehan, who takes it because he doesn’t want to risk upsetting Mont anymore. “You never could take a joke,” he says, “but you know I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says automatically.

Mont slings an arm around his shoulder and steers him away from the bar. “And Jehan,” he whispers into his ear as they walk.

“Yeah?”

“If I find out that you’ve touched that whore of a boy again, I’ll kill him. Just keep that in mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, for all your support and kudos and comments and general fabulousness. I fear that I've spent the last two months scarring you all emotionally when you've been nothing but lovely. (For the record, I apologize for the emotional scarring and promise that we'll be moving into less scarring material soon--maybe even next week soon if I can keep my work ethic up?)
> 
> Because you're all so wonderful, you'll get another chapter on FRIDAY! 
> 
> Keep on keepin' on, friends :)


	53. Chapter Fifty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short transitional chapter featuring Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre (in which I discover yet again that I hate writing transitional chapters and if I didn't need this to set up future chapters, I wouldn't have even written this.)

Once the hearing is out of the way, Courfeyrac throws himself into his school work and he’s more grateful than he can ever remember being for school. School means that he has homework and reading assignments and ABC meetings to occupy his time and his mind. School means that he really needs to finish the last of his applications to law schools because he wants to make sure he gets in _somewhere_. School also means that he gets to see Jehan a little more regularly, because no matter what the hell Montparnasse is doing, he’s not keeping Jehan from classes. So Courfeyrac carves out time in his schedule every day where he can run into Jehan in various spots on campus—even though he’s not too sure how much Jehan wants to see him.

Jehan is looking better to some degree—but also worse. Still pale, still thin, but the bruises are starting to fade and if they’re being replaced by new ones, then Jehan does a good job of hiding them. He flinches at sudden noises—doors slamming or books dropping to the ground—and he rarely smiles, though he always seems to make an extra effort for his friends. Jehan tries to come to ABC meetings, but none of them question it when he can’t make them or when he excuses himself early.

Courfeyrac tries not to feel angry. The rage he felt at the fundraiser and the New Years’ Eve party—he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like that he felt so angry that he was shaking, that he would have done something stupid had Combeferre and Enjolras not been there to hold him back. He feels sick with fury when he thinks of what’s going on between Montparnasse and Jehan and he worries that he won’t be able to control his temper and accidentally lash out verbally at Jehan about all of this shit, and he knows that having someone yell at him is the very _last_ thing Jehan needs right now.

Most often, when he feels angry, he seeks out Enjolras or Combeferre, both of whom listen with sympathetic ears and don’t wig out when happy-go-lucky Courfeyrac gets so angry that he swears like a sailor and once threw one of Combeferre’s coffee mugs against the wall.

Unfortunately, Enjolras—while still a good distraction—is less of a sympathetic ear these days and more of a prattling mess—mostly because of a certain man named Grantaire who Enjolras cannot. Stop. Talking about.

In another circumstance or perhaps at another time, he’d find Enjolras’s preoccupation with Grantaire amusing and downright laughable, but it’s hard to be patient with Enjolras as he navigates the new water of liking someone when he’s so worried about Jehan.

For the moment, though, Enjolras is distracted. The three of them are at Combeferre and Enjolras’s shared apartment trying to take care of some last minute matters before the ABC meeting that night. Grantaire had, in fact, texted a few hours before with news of the most recent attack. The sex worker that Grantaire knows—Courfeyrac has yet to get a straight answer about how Grantaire knows this woman and when he’s asked Enjolras about it, Enjolras has merely said, “It’s not my story to tell,” and left it at that—she texted Grantaire about an underage sex worker who had been brutally attacked. She and some of the other friends and family of the victims had set up a free blog to memorialize the victims and the most recent post is a picture of the most recent victim—young enough to just be a high school student and in the picture she’s smiling and Courfeyrac thinks she’d be a cute girl if her face wasn’t caked in too much make-up and her hair not botched by a bad dye job.

It hurts to look at her picture and know that she’s currently in the ICU at the hospital.

Underneath her picture on the blog is a solicitation for prayers on her behalf. Apparently, the doctors don’t have much hope for her.

Courfeyrac closes his laptop and pushes it away, unable to look at the girl anymore. “You’d think something like this would make the police finally pay attention,” he grumbles. “She can’t be any older than sixteen.”

“She’s fourteen, actually,” Enjolras says. “Sandra—the woman that Grantaire knows—said that this girl ran away from an abusive home last year and has been trying to make it on the street. Sandra and some of the older women have been helping look after her and making sure she attends school, but apparently she fell in with a bad crowd and they lost track of her.”

“Is everything taken care of for the awareness run this weekend?” Combeferre asks. He looks ill and Courfeyrac knows that he has some cousins who are this girl’s age. He can’t blame Combeferre for being anxious for the awareness run to—hopefully—bring this to the media’s attention.

“Jehan’s taken care of everything,” Courfeyrac says. “Or at the very least, he’s delegated everything to someone else to make sure it’s gotten done. He forewarded me the confirmation emails. I can send them onto you.”

He opens up his laptop again—quickly closing the tab for the blog so he doesn't have to keep looking at the girl's picture—and forwards the emails he’s gotten from Jehan to Enjolras and Combeferre. He’s impressed by the work Jehan’s done, because not only has he done the work to get the run organized, but he’s managed to do it on _top_ of everything else that he’s dealing with. He found a fun-run that was scheduled for the middle of January and teamed up with that organization to turn it into an awareness run. Courfeyrac’s not certain how much planning and organization had to go into this, but he knows it must have been a substantial amount of work.

“I don’t know he does it,” Combeferre says, opening the emails. “With everything else that’s going on…”

“Grantaire says that Jehan’s a lot stronger than people give him credit for,” Enjolras says. “We shouldn’t be surprised that he’s been able to manage all of this.” He pauses for a moment, as though contemplating something, then says, “Grantaire’s a lot stronger than people give him credit for, too.”

“Oh, here it comes,” Courfeyrac mutters under his breath, which makes Combeferre smile. Once Enjolras gets on the subject of Grantaire, it’s been getting increasingly harder to derail him.

“No, really,” Enjolras says. “Grantaire says that pretty soon Jehan’s going to sort this all out for himself and he says that he wouldn’t be surprised if Jehan leaves Montparnasse that same day once he makes the decision.”

“And just how do you know so much about what Grantaire thinks on the matter?” Courfeyrac asks.

Enjolras blushes. Considering how fair his skin is, it’s incredibly noticeable. “He’s been texting,” he says. “We’ve been. I mean, he keeps texting me but I’m texting him back—which is annoying because he texts all the time. I can hardly get anything done.”

“You’ve never had a problem with not texting me back,” Courfeyrac says.

“You’re just letting me know things most of the time,” Enjolras says. “It’s usually not stuff I need to respond to. When he texts me, it’s—you should read the things he says. I can’t _not_ respond. It’s time consuming and he says the most maddening things and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Can’t stop thinking about it or him?” Combeferre asks.

“What?”

“Can you not stop thinking about the texts or can you not stop thinking about him?” Combeferre asks.

“Is there a difference?” Enjolras asks. “Either way, I can barely work on anything before he’s on my mind again.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Enjolras, it’s just a crush, okay?” Courferyac snaps because there’s only so much obliviousness he can take. “Just a fucking crush.”

“What?” Enjolras asks, completely perplexed.

He rolls his eyes. “You have a crush,” he says, enunciating each word clearly. To his left, Combeferre is fighting back a smile.

“I do not.”

“Are you kidding me?” Courfeyrac says. “You’ve done nothing but yammer on about Grantaire for three full days now!”

“I have not been yammering,” Enjolras says. “And I do not have a crush. I just—Grantaire is—it’s not a crush. I don't have crushes.”

“See,” Courfeyrac says, turning to Combeferre, “this is why we’re supposed to have our first crush when we’re eleven or twelve—not ten years later. He’s completely unbearable.”

“This isn’t his first crush,” Combeferre says.

“Ferre, don’t you dare—”

Courfeyrac grins, latching on to anything that might combat the somber mood in the room. “Our fearless leader has tasted love before?” he asks.

“I’d hardly call it love,” Combeferre says. “And it was a celebrity crush, so not anyone we actually know, but he was fourteen—which is still a bit older than most, I suppose, but it’s better than this.”

“Tell me more,” Courfeyrac says. “I beg of you. Which celebrity was it?”

“Combeferre,” Enjolras says, the back of his neck and the tips of his ears are red. “I swear, if you—”

“Robert Pattinson,” Comebferre says, smirking now.

Courfeyrac laughs so hard he nearly chokes. “R-Patz, are you serious?” He looks between his two friends. “He had a crush on Edward fucking Cullen?”

“To be fair,” Combeferre says, “he only liked him as Cedric Diggory, not as Edward.”

Courfeyrac groans because this is just too good. He glances at Enjolras. “You would have a crush on Cedric,” he says. “It’s like having a crush on Combeferre.”

That, of course, gets Combeferre to groan. “Thanks, Courf,” he says.

“I don’t have crushes,” Enjolras says.

“Ah, but your oldest and bestest friend—besides me, of course—”

“Of course,” Combeferre and Enjolras say drolly.

“Begs to differ,” Courfeyrac says. “There’s nothing wrong with it, of course. Grantaire’s an attractive guy, and once you get past a lot of his snark, he’s pretty funny. Talented, too. If you two could stop arguing for five minutes, I think you’d get along swimmingly. No, the problem is that you’re acting like a love-sick fool about all of this instead of actually _doing_ something about it.”

“That’s because there’s nothing to be done,” Enjorlas says.

“It’s pretty obvious to everyone in this room that you like Grantaire,” Courfeyrac says.

“I don’t like him,” Enjolras says, blushing still. “I mean, I like him—he’s a very good person—but I don’t…I don’t…you know, I don’t _like_ like him.”

Courfeyrac snorts. “Did you hear that, Ferre? Enjolras doesn’t _like him_ like him. See what I mean about the twelve-year-oldness happening here?”

“Leave me out of this,” Combeferre says.

Across the table, Enjolras is glaring at Courfeyrac. “I fail to see how it’s any of your business if I like someone—which, for the record, I don’t! Passing obsession with Robert Pattinson aside, I don’t like people. Not like that. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Of course there’s nothing wrong with that,” Courfeyrac says. Of course, there’s also nothing wrong with that changing, either, but he knows better than to bring that up at the moment. Enjolras looks like he might hit him if he pushes the subject any further.

Still, he can’t quite stop himself from humming that stupid nursey rhyme about sitting in trees and kissing as Combeferre navigates them back on topic. It takes a couple of bars before Combeferre and Enjolras recognize the tune, but when they do, Combeferre groans and Enjolras lobs his cell phone at Courfeyrac’s head.

Courfeyrac thinks the risk of bodily harm is worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday the thirteenth, friends :) Thanks for all the comments/kudos/and general awesomeness. This fic has surpassed 500 kudos and I'm swooning (because I honestly never thought that many people would even read this to say nothing of actually liking it!)
> 
> Anyway, I love you all and I'm really excited for Tuesday's chapter so if any of you know a way to speed up time, you should probably do that for me, thanks.
> 
> Chapter 54 will be up on Tuesday :)


	54. Chapter Fifty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Les Amis participate in the charity run

Jehan shows up for the charity run a little after the bulk of the crowd has gotten there. It’s chilly, but not biting, and he takes a deep breath and feels the tension across his chest. He and Mont argued again last night—are they really arguments, though? Mont just got mad at him for not doing the dishes—but no, he should have done the dishes. He should have kept up on them, so really he doesn’t blame Mont for getting mad. But when Mont gets mad these days, Jehan normally ends up with new bruises and he worries that the damage done this time might be more extensive than in previous altercations because of how tight his chest is. Chetta and Bossuet are working at a registration table and they both smile at him when he goes to pick up his packet.

“I thought you were running too, Bossuet,” he says.

Bossuet looks at him with a sheepish expression. “I rolled my ankle yesterday,” he says, “It was really stupid because I was just walking down the stairs and I missed a step. Anyway, Joly’s worried that it’s sprained so I’m sitting out today.”

“Just as well,” Musichetta says with a fond smile. It’s impossible to miss how much she cares for him. “If you didn’t roll your ankle last night, I’d say it’s likely you’d break it today.”

Jehan smiles at them, happy to see his friends so happy and so obviously in love. When Chetta offers to help him pin his runner’s bib to his shirt, he accepts her help graciously and tries not to hiss in pain when she accidentally jabs a healing bruise with the pin. She chats with him for a few minutes with the same look in her eyes that she had on New Year’s Eve—the sort of look that says, “I know exactly what’s going on, but I’ll only talk about it if you bring it up first.” At least, that’s what he hopes what the look says, because he understands full well that the look actually says, “I know exactly what’s going on and I don’t understand why you keep letting it happen.”

He wonders if she finds the conversation as painfully awkward as he does. He’s saved from the small talk when Bossuet summons her back to the table and she directs him to where their other friends are hanging around.

Not all of his friends are running today, but they are all gathered together in clumps of threes and fours. Enjolras, who’s not running, is talking to Courfeyrac and Combeferre, both of whom are. Marius holds out an arm for Cosette to steady herself on while she stretchs her quads. Joly and Fueilly, both stretching as well, are nearby and Jehan can hear Joly going on about the dangers of running without a proper warm-up. Grantaire and Eponine talk while Bahorel flirts with some girl who laughs robustly and whose well-toned body suggests that she’s an experienced runner.

Jehan hangs back from them all as he stretches, not feeling comfortable approaching them. He senses a weird tension between him and the rest of the group and he doesn’t know if it’s in his head or if it actually exists, but either way, it’s enough for him to not feel comfortable around them. He knows they all know what’s gone on between him and Mont. With the way they all gossip among each other—okay, he knows it’s not really gossiping. He knows they’re just worried—there’s no way that they can’t know.

And Mont knows that they know, which is…difficult. Because Mont keeps telling him that surely his friends think less of him because of this. In some of their more bitter arguments, Mont pulls it out like a trump card. Jehan’s friends don’t really care about him. They haven’t done anything to protect him. They probably think he’s weak and stupid for sticking around, and Jehan can’t help but thinking that maybe Mont’s right. His friends are acting differently around him. He knows they are.

Courf, well, Courf is the same as ever—always making excuses to show up when his classes let out or whisking him away to lunch, but Jehan knows he’s not imagining the slight frown that Courfeyrac wears whenever he’s around and the way Courf avoids talking about Montparnasse at all. Sometimes he worries that he’s pushing the limits of his friendship with Courf too far. That Courf isn’t going to sit around and watch this happen forever. He’ll snap, eventually. Shout at Jehan about how he should left the first time Mont hit him, about how foolish he is to think that you don’t leave people you love just because they act like this. Almost daily he expects Courfeyrac to just tire of him.

And if Courfeyrac, who quite possibly has the biggest heart of anyone Jehan has ever met, tires of him, Jehan doesn’t have any misconceptions that the others will too. They’ll get sick of worrying over the sad sack who can’t take care of himself, they’ll miss the person Jehan was before all of this happened, and then they’ll be gone. He’ll still have Grantaire, he knows that. Or at least he hopes that, because he thinks that maybe he and Grantaire, at least, have been through enough that Grantaire won’t leave him now, but he knows Eponine is frustrated with him. He knows.

Out of everyone, it’s Enjolras who spots him and waves him over. Unable to think of a reason not go, Jehan complies. Enjolras thanks him for getting this all organized and Jehan shrugs off the thanks. Really, it was his pleasure. Helping get this all organized gave him something other than Mont to think about for the last month, gave him a reason to get up in the morning. They make conversation about school and classes—as with Musichetta, the conversation feels stilted and awkward like Jehan has lost the ability to communicate with normal people—and he’s relieved when Combeferre mentions that Grantaire and Eponine are trying to get their attention. They excuse themselves, leaving Jehan alone with Courfeyrac.

Jehan watches Courfeyrac stretch. He moves his body in such a way that indicates trained experience with running. “Are you a runner?” he asks.

Courfeyrac shakes his head, grinning. “Unless you count soccer,” he says. “I played all during middle school and high school—which involves a fair bit of running, you know, but nothing like what you’re used to, I’m sure.”

Jehan gives him a faint smile. “My sport is your sport’s punishment,” he says, quipping the old joke that he and the other cross country runners used to make in high school.

“Truth,” Courfeyrac says. “Whenever Coach would get mad at us, he’d have us running hills in the park and I _hated_ it.”

“Hills aren’t that bad,” Jehan says.

Courfeyrac shakes his head and mutters, “Runners.” But then he’s smiling again. “Here’s an idea,” he says. “We should race. My soccer skills against your cross-country,” he says. “Let’s see if we can get a little tortoise-hare thing going on.”

Jehan rolls his eyes and smiles a little. Courfeyrac can always make him smile. “I’m a bit faster than a tortoise, thank you,” he says.

“Oh, I was calling myself the tortoise,” he says, one corner of his mouth twitching up into a smile. “Come on. It’s about to start. Let’s get somewhere we’re less likely to be trampled.”

When the race starts, Jehan is grateful that Courfeyrac led them off to the side of the pack, because even on the edge he’s being jostle. The run has a good turn out and Jehan is pleased to see them all, pleased to see the grim statistics about rape and sexual assault and violence against sex workers being displayed so prominently on the runner’s bibs, but he less pleased by the turn out when people crowd around him and someone accidentally knocks into him. His ribs ache upon impact and somewhere between stumbling and trying to catch his breath, he looks up and realizes that Courfeyrac has pulled ahead. He can still see Courfeyrac’s mop of curly hair in front of him and he keeps his eyes trained on it, pushes the pain from his ribs out of his mind, and focuses on letting Courfeyrac lead him out of this mess.

Halfway through the third mile, Jehan knows something is wrong. He lost track of Courfeyrac about a mile back, and he’s stuck solidly in the middle of the pack, surrounded by faceless strangers with an endless barrage of facts and statistics pinned to their backs, and he can’t breathe. His chest is too tight. It’s like there’s a band of pressure around his lungs and it scares him because in all the years he ran cross country in high school, he’s never felt anything like this before.

He drifts to the side of the pack and slows down. No one pays him any attention as he gasps for breath—he’s just another runner who overexerted himself, who didn’t pace himself properly—until someone barrels into him. Large hands latch onto his shoulders and keep him from face-planting. The hands don’t move until he’s steady.

“Ah, shit, Jehan,” Bahorel says, taking out his ear buds. “I didn’t see you there. You okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, still gasping. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I expected you to be leading the pack.”

“I guess I’m not in as good of shape as I thought I was,” he says. He presses his hands against his ribs. They’re sore, tender. But the pressure against his lungs is even, rather than sharp, which makes him think that maybe he’s still okay to keep running.

Bahorel gives him a look as Jehan presses against his rib cage and Jehan braces himself for the tirade he’s been expecting from all his friends for the past month. Bahorel’s not stupid and he’s probably had bruised ribs before, all things considered. So Jehan braces himself to be snapped at, because out of everyone, surely Bahorel is the most disappointed that Jehan hasn’t fought back, that he hasn’t offered up any resistance. He knows what Bahorel must think and he braces himself to hear the words _. No wonder he’s not in shape, considering he lets his boyfriend hit him, and he’d be better off if he just left Mont already—and why hasn’t he done that yet?_

But what Bahorel does say takes him completely by surprise.

“To be honest, distance running’s not really my thing,” Bahorel says, giving him a kind look. “I’m more a sprinter. How about you and I take it slow together?”

Together, they cut their pace back to a slow jog—which Bahorel manages easily, despite his claims that he’s worn out. As they jog, he asks questions that force Jehan to breathe as he answers, and after a mile or so of this, when it becomes obvious that even this slow pace is becoming too much for Jehan, Bahorel complains that he’s getting a cramp and insists that they slow down some more.

When they pass a water station, Eponine sees them. She takes one look at Jehan, whose steps are still faltering despite the fact that he hardly considers their pace _running_ anymore, and he’s sure that she can see straight into his heart. She drops her cup and joins them. She wraps an arm around Jehan’s waist and wedges herself under his arm. She gently pulls him close.

“Is this okay?” she asks.

He nods because he doesn’t think he’s able to say anything without starting to cry.

Over the next several miles, their motley group seems to attract more of their friends. They’re going slow enough that Joly, who’s a slow but steady runner, catches up with them. Joly and Bahorel exchange a look that Jehan can’t quite translate before Joly falls into step with them. He smiles at Jehan and gives his arm a gentle squeeze.

“We’re here with you,” Joly says. “You’re not alone.”

Jehan blinks back tears from his eyes.

At the next water station, they find Grantaire, who’s stationed there to hand out cups as the runners come by. When Grantaire spots them, he vaults over the fence and braces Jehan from the other side. Jehan fists his hand into Grantaire’s jacket, holding onto him tightly. There is no need for words between them.

There is solidarity in every step and Jehan tells himself he won’t cry even though this is the first time in ages that he doesn’t feel so alone, but when they approach the finish line and Jehan can see the rest of his friends wating for him and the others, with Courfeyrac standing right in the center and smiling like he only has eyes for Jehan, he can’t help himself. He weeps openly and refuses to feel ashamed for it.

He pulls away from Grantaire and Eponine as he crosses the finish line and he practically falls into Courfeyrac’s arms. Courfeyrac holds him close, but he doesn’t say anything. His body is solid and reassuring and Jehan’s not sure he ever wants to let go.

Jehan doesn’t know how long he’s got his face buried against Courf’s shoulder before Courf pulls back. Courfeyrac rubs Jehan’s arms and smiles at you. “I got worried when I lost track of you,” he says. “I thought you were right behind me.”

“I fell behind,” he says. “And then I bumped into Bahorel.”

“Jehan?” Combeferre says softly, approaching the pair of them. “Bahorel says that you were having trouble breathing. Is everything all right?”

“It’s fine,” he says automatically. “My ribs are just a little bruised.”

He doesn’t mention why. He doesn’t need to.

Combeferre nods. “Would it be all right with you if I looked you over?” he asks. “Just to be sure that you’re not in any danger.”

Jehan hesitates, unsure if he’s comfortable exposing the patchwork of bruises on his skin to anyone, but Courfeyrac gives his upper arm a little squeeze. “I can come with you, if you’d like,” he says. “So you won’t be alone with Scary Ferre.”

Combeferre rolls his eyes. “I’m hardly scary.”

“Yeah,” Courfeyrac says dryly. “Uh-huh. So how about it, Jehan?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess that’s fine. As long as we’re not in public?”

“Of course,” Combeferre says, steering him towards campus. “I’m sure we can find a room to use here.”

The 10K had wrapped around campus and the finish line isn’t far from the life sciences building. Combeferre leads them in and directs them towards an emptyt bathroom.

Inside it’s a struggle for Jehan to get his shirt off, in part because the fabric is tight, but mostly because his body is sore. He keeps his back to the mirrors as he pulls it off and he waits to hear the hisses or the gasps that come from his friends at the revelation of his mottled skin.

It doesn’t come. Combeferre frowns a little as he peers at the bruises and Courfeyrac’s hands clench, like he’s trying very, very hard not to punch the mirror right now, but neither of them say anything. Neither of them pity him.

“Nice tats,” Courfeyrac says after a moment of silence. He nods towards the reflection of Jehan’s back in the mirror. “How long have you had them?”

Jehan glances over his shoulder so he can see his back in the mirror and the trail of colorful floral tattoos that curve along his shoulder and run along the edge of his back. The tattoo doesn’t look quite right because his back is as bruised as his chest, but he still smiles a little when he sees it. “Almost two years now,” he says. “It was a birthday gift for myself. When I turned eighteen. Grantaire did all the design work and Mont…Mont introduced me to the tattoo artist.” He doesn’t mention that Mont also stayed with him during all three tattooing sessions and read poetry to him to keep his mind occupied. It doesn’t seem right to bring up such a pleasant memory now.

“I like them,” Courfeyrac says.

“Pass on the compliment to R,” Jehan says. He winces when Combeferre gently presses against his ribs. “He did the design work. I didn’t really do anything but lay there.”

Combeferre pulls away and Courfeyrac says, “What’s the verdict, doc?”

“I’m not a doctor,” he says. “But I think your ribs are fractured, Jehan.”

He folds his arms over his chest, in part because the bathroom is cold and in part to cover the bruises. He refuses to look at them. “So I just let them heal, right?” he says. “I don’t have to get them set or anything?”

“No,” Combeferre says slowly. “They don’t have to be set, but they’re fragile, and I worry that if…something happens, then they’ll break—and broken ribs are dangerous, Jehan. They could puncture your lungs.”

“So what can we do?” Courfeyrac asks.

Jehan braces himself for an “It’s time to move out of Mont’s apartment” lecture. He knows they’d be right to give, but he’s not sure he’s ready to hear it out loud.  

“Taping your ribs to give them some stability is our best option,” Combeferre says. “It won’t help much against…direct blows to your rib cage, but it’ll help strengthen them for day-to-day sorts of things.”

“Can you do that?” Jehan asks. He doesn’t want to have to see an actual doctor who’ll pry and ask questions he doesn’t want to answer.

“No,” Combeferre says. “But there are some paramedics lingering around in case anyone got hurt on the run. Any one of them would be able to tape these for you. Would you be okay with that?”

“I guess,” he says.

Combeferre smiles at him and says, “Courf, would you mind asking one of the paramedics to join us?”

Courfeyrac hesitates for a moment, exchanging a look with Combeferre before he leaves.

When they’re alone, Combeferre gives him a sympathetic smile. “Things rough at home?” he asks.

Jehan focuses his gaze somewhere near Combeferre’s elbow so he doesn’t have to look the other man in the face. “It’s fine,” he says. “Mont’s just…he’s been going through a rough time and it’s made his temper short. He doesn’t really mean to do any of this.”

“Are you sure about that?” Combeferre asks. His voice is gentle. “Unless I’m mistaken, this has been going on for at least a month now, Jehan. You shouldn’t have to put up with this sort of behavior.”

“I’m not putting up with it,” he says. “I’m not just some sort of observer of my own life. It’s _my choice_ to stay with Mont.”

“Do you mind if I ask why you’ve made that choice?”

“I love him,” Jehan says. “I know it probably doesn’t make sense to you, but I love him and you don’t just abandon people that you love.”

“Are you sure he loves you as much as you love him?” he says.

“What do you mean?” 

Combeferre takes him by the shoulders and gently turns him around so he’s facing the mirror. “Look at yourself, Jehan,” he says.

Jehan forces himself to examine himself in the mirror and take note of the purple and green bruises that cling to his skin. He’s done his best to avoid mirrors and reflective surfaces since before Christmas and he hurries when he showers, so he never spends much time looking at himself. Layers of bruises decorate his skin in various colors and stages of healing. There’s hardly any part of his chest that’s left untouched.

“You don’t hurt people that you love like this,” Combeferre says. “Whatever else he’s telling you, this is _not_ love.”

Courfeyrac returns before Jehan is forced to come up with a response. The paramedic makes short work of taping up Jehan’s ribs and Jehan can assume that Courfeyrac must have asked the paramedic not to ask questions, because he’s silent as he works. Courfeyrac and Combeferre wait for him as he struggles back into his shirt.

“Did you have a good chat with Ferre?” Courfyerac asks as they leave.

“He gave me a lot to think about.”

* * *

 

Courfeyrac spends a half hour trying to talk Jehan in to coming out with him and a few others to get French toast at the Musain, but Jehan declines, saying that he really does need to get home. Mont was still asleep when Jehan left this morning, but surely he’s awake by now, and Jehan doesn’t want to risk his temper if he stays out too long.

By the time he gets home, Mont is getting ready to leave. Mont looks up from his phone as Jehan shuts the door behind him.

“Where’ve you been all morning?” Mont asks.

Jehan kicks off his shoes. “I had that charity run this morning,” he says.

“What the hell is a charity run?”

“I told you about it,” Jehan says. “I spent like all of last month helping to organize it.”

Mont just stares at him blankly and Jehan sighs.

“It was to raise awareness about child abuse,” he says, which is the same lie he gave Mont in the half-dozen other times he told him about this. “We got a bunch of people together to run a 10K and we all had stats about child abuse pinned to our shirts. It’s supposed to help raise awareness.”

“How the fuck is that supposed to change anything?”

“The goal isn’t necessarily to _change_ anything—not outright, at least,” he says. “But it’s supposed to bring the issue to people’s attention, get them to start talking about. Once a conversation is started, then we can start changing things.”

“Sounds pointless,” Mont says. “Did you at least win the fucking race?”

“It wasn’t a race,” he says. “Nobody wins.”

Mont gives him an odd look. “Then what’s the point of even running? You always waste your time with such pointless shit.”

“It’s not pointless,” he says. “And even if it’s a wasted effort, it’s still something I care about.”

“Meaning what? I’m just supposed to waste my time on stupid shit just because you care about it?”

Jehan crosses his arms over his chest. “Do you even care about any of the things that are important to me?”

Mont gives him a cool look and Jehan tries not to shiver. “Why would I?”

“I—nevermind,” Jehan says. He doesn’t want another argument, even though an unsettled feeling in his stomach practically demands that he stand his ground on this.

“Whatever,” Mont says. “C’mere a minute.”

Jehan moves forward, but leaves an arm’s length of distance between them.

Mont rolls his eyes. “You’re so fucking skittish,” he says and he closes the distance between them so he can claim a kiss. “It’s obnoxious. Anyway, I’ve got some business I need to take care of today, so I’m going to be out for a few hours. See if you can get the blood stain from last week out of the carpet, yeah? The landlord phoned to say he was coming by tomorrow to check on the place and I’m not going to lose my fucking security deposit because you had to bleed all over the floor. You can get your shit together long enough to do that, can’t you?”

“Yeah,” Jehan says, flinching a little. “I can get that done.”

“Perfect,” he says, claiming a second kiss. “Leave me a message if you need anything while I’m out.”

“Yeah,” Jehan says, wishing Mont would just leave already. “Sure.”

Once Mont leaves, Jehan heads straight to the shower and as the hot water runs over his skin, he thinks over everything that’s happened recently—thinks of all the arguments and fights, all the times he’s bled on the carpet or cried himself to sleep. He thinks of all the times Mont has brushed him off or ignored him when Jehan asked for a favor. He thinks of the way Mont used to be—the way Mont used to come to his poetry readings and would tell Gueulemer to shut his mouth every time he said something rude about Jehan. He thinks of the way Mont was always so ready to come to his defense after every altercation Jehan had with his dad and how after talking to Mont, he always felt stronger.

Now he feels empty, discarded, broken.

Enough is enough.

When he gets out of the shower, he wraps a towel around his waist and reaches for his phone. He calls Courfeyrac.

“Hey, Jehan,” Courfeyrac says when he answers the phone. “What’s up?”

Jehan takes a deep breath. “I…I’m done. Mont and I are done,” he says. “I want to move out. Can you help?”

In his mind, he can imagine Courf’s smile when he says this.

“Text me your address,” Courfeyrac says. “I’m leaving now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday, friends :) I've been SO eager to finally get this chapter posted, so I hope you're all as pleased with it as I am. Thanks so much for your continued support and all around amazingness. You guys are the best.
> 
> So, some quick housekeeping things. Remember when I said that I was thinking of making a writing blog? Well, I finally got something thrown together. I'm not 100% happy with it, so I'll probably keep tweaking it over the next few weeks, and right now it's only got a couple of things up, but for those of you who were interested, you can find it [here](http://kingess.dreamwidth.org/). You're all more than welcome to come say hi to me there or at my [tumblr](http://kingesstropolis.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Next chapter probably won't be up till next Tuesday. I've been critiquing a manuscript for a friend this past week and haven't had as much time to work on my own stuff.


	55. Chapter Fifty-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac helps Jehan move out

Courfeyrac takes Bahorel with him to help Jehan move out of Montparnasse’s apartment. He’s not sure if Montparnasse was out when Jehan called or if he plans on returning soon at all, but in that case, Courfeyrac wants Bahorel at his side to stand in Jehan’s defense. And, in the event that Montparnasse doesn’t show up in the middle of them moving out Jehan’s stuff, then at the very least they can make Bahorel carry the heavy things.

Like Jehan’s books.

Of which Courfeyrac is sure there are many.

When they get to Jehan’s apartment, Jehan has already started packing up his stuff. He offers them a weak smile as he ushers them in.

“Mont said he’d be gone for a few hours,” Jehan says. “But that doesn’t really mean much. He’s dropped by unexpectedly before.”

“He doesn’t know you’re leaving?” Bahorel asks.

“Well, no,” Jehan says. “I just…I thought it would be best, you know, to get out while he wasn’t around. I don’t want to argue with him. I don’t want another fight. I just thought—”

“It’s fine,” Courfeyrac says. “And you’re right. This is probably the best way to handle this. So let’s just focus on getting you out of here before Montparnasse shows back up, yeah?”

Jehan nods and he rubs the back of his neck and looks around his apartment like he’s lost. Courfeyrac feels a stab of sympathy because he knows this can’t be easy.

“Should I start moving the books down?” Bahorel asks, nodding to a bookshelf in the corner. “I assume these are yours, at least. Montparnasse doesn’t strike me as much of a Keats or Neruda fan.”

“I…yeah,” Jehan says. “Let’s start with the books.”

With Bahorel around to do most of the heavy lifting, Courfeyrac dedicates his efforts to helping Jehan sort through what belongs to him and what belongs to Mont. On the way to the bedroom, Jehan grabs a few boxes of tea bags out of a kitchen cupboard, but says that he’ll leave the rest of the kitchen stuff for Mont.

“Let’s get things you can’t replace out of the way first,” Courfeyrac suggests when they’re in the bedroom together. Normally, being alone in a bedroom with Jehan—well, with any of his friends, really— would be cause for some sort of dirty joke, but right now the mood is too somber. Jehan is committed to his decision to end things with Montparnasse and move out, but it’s clear that it was a hard decision and right now he needs support and encouragement, not stupid jokes. “One-of-a-kind sorts of things or anything you’re emotionally attached to.”

Jehan nods. The room is small—enough room for a bed, a dresser, and a nighttable on either side of the bed. There are two paintings on the walls—one over the bed and another hanging across from the window—and assorted nic-nacs on the night stands and the dresser, but other than that, the room is sparse. Jehan already has two half-filled suitcases and a handful of trashbags that they can throw everything else into to make everything easier to carry. This is a quick move, so Courfeyrac isn’t too concerned about things going into neatly organized boxes.

Jehan sits on the edge of the bed and tosses his boxes of tea into one of the suitcases. He looks like he’s not sure what to do at this point.

“So Bahorel’s taking care of the book collection,” Courfeyrac says. Jehan’s been pretty quiet since he and Bahorel showed up, and he’s trying to find things to prompt Jehan into talking. “What else would you prioritize getting out of here?”

“My poetry notebooks,” he says.

“Notebooks? I thought you just had the one.”

“The one you’ve seen is my current one,” he says. He gets up and pulls out a dusty box from his closet. “I’ve…I keep all my old ones with me. I don’t dare leave them at home, because who knows what my dad would do to them.”

“That looks heavy, so we’ll save that box for Bahorel when he comes back upstairs. What else?”

Jehan glances around the room, and Courfeyrac imagines that he’s recalling countless memories that he has of this room and what’s happened in it. He hopes that most of those memories are good ones, that the violence that has infiltrated his relationship with Montparnasse did not extend to the bedroom.  “Grantaire’s painting,” he says, moving around the bed to get the painting that hangs across from the window. It’s an abstract piece with warm, muted colors. “This is the first painting he ever did for me.”

“What about the one over the bed?” Courfeyrac asks.

But Jehan shakes his head. “That one’s Mont’s,” he says. “I commissioned it from R for Mont’s birthday two years ago.”

Looking at it again, Courfeyrac can see how it’s very much a _Montparnasse_ sort of painting rather than a _Jehan_ sort of painting. Where Jehan’s painting is warm and soft and the colors blend seamlessly, Montparnasse’s is harsher. Bold colors—mostly blacks and bleak, rusty reds—with hard lines. It doesn’t look a thing like Jehan.

When Courfeyrac looks away from the painting, he finds Jehan sitting on the bed, holding the painting in his hands and looking weary.

“Sorry,” he says. His voice is rough and he doesn’t look up from the painting. “I’m sorry, I just—I know this has to happen, I know it, but I—”

“You don’t have to apologize to me,” Courfeyrac says, sitting down next to Jehan. “This is a really hard thing that you’re doing, I know it is. And in a perfect world, you’d be able to take all the time you need to go through things and process all of this, but right now I think it’s more important that we get you out of here. So how about I start packing your clothes and shoes and that sort of stuff, and you worry about getting that painting wrapped up so it doesn’t get damaged on the move?”

Jehan takes a deep breath and nods. “I can do that.”

Courfeyrac gives his hand a gentle squeeze and smiles at him reassuringly. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he says.

“Except I don’t really know where I’m going after this,” Jehan says. He pulls a towel off a hook on the bedroom door, lays it on the bed, and gently places the painting in the middle of it. “Normally I’d crash at R’s place, but with Eponine’s siblings there, there’s not room. I could probably get a hotel room—”

“Don’t be silly,” Courfeyrac says. He’s stripping Jehan’s sweaters off hangers in the closet and tossing them into the suitcase. They can replace the hangers later. “You can stay at my place. In fact, I’d be offended if you _didn’t_.”

“You’ve only got a one bedroom, though, and I—”

“And you’ve already got a key,” Courfeyrac says brightly. “Seems only fitting that you move in. And trust me, the space isn’t an issue, okay? Marius lived with me for three months and we managed just fine.”

Jehan looks at him with wide eyes. “Are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother.”

“It’s not a bother,” he says. “And if it’s too cramped, then you can just stay with me until we find you a new place.”

Jehan nods and turns his attention back to the painting he’s wrapping up in a towel.

When Bahorel finishes hauling books down to his car, he helps Courfeyrac finish packing up Jehan’s closet. They do a shitty job of it, to be honest. Clothes thrown in haphazardly and shoes shoved in at odd angles. What they can’t fit into the suitcases, they toss into trashbags for carrying convenience. Only the painting and Jehan’s poetry notebooks get treated with the respect they deserve. Courfeyrac feels a touch guilty for his rough treatment of Jehan’s belongings, but really, it’s far more important to him that they get out of the apartment before Montparnasse gets home.

All three of them haul suitcases and trashbags down to the car and while Jehan plays tetris to get everything to fit properly, Courfeyrac and Bahorel return to the apartment to do a quick sweep of the apartment for anything that Jehan might have missed. Courfeyrac finds a used literature anthology that has to be Jehan’s under the bed and he’s checking the dresser when he hears Bahorel swearing from the front room.

Worried that Montparnasse came back unexpectedly, he hurries out of the room to see Bahorel standing in front of the sofa that he had just shoved aside two feet to check under it. In the process, he seemed to have exposed a rust colored stain on the carpet.

“Is that— _shit_ ,” Courfeyrac says. “Is that blood?”

“It might not be Jehan’s,” Bahorel says, though the tone of his voice suggests that he doesn’t believe his own words. “Who knows what that sick fucker got up to here? That doesn’t mean it’s Jehan’s.”

“That’s not a small stain, Bahorel,” Courfeyrac says. “What’d that asshole do—cut him open with a fucking knife?”

“Head wounds bleed a lot,” he says.

“Fuck,” Courfeyrac says, right as the front door swings open. He and Bahorel both jump, but it’s just Jehan.

“Did you guys find anything?” he asks.

“Found another book,” Courfeyrac says, holding out the thick tome.

But Jehan’s eyes are drawn to the stain on the floor that Bahorel unearthed. An embarrassed blush creeps over his face. “Oh,” he says. “I was supposed to clean that up.”

Somehow, that makes the stain worse in Courfeyrac’s mind. It wasn’t enough for Montparnasse to make Jehan bleed all over the apartment—he also was enough of a bastard to insist that Jehan clean it up himself.

Bahorel tugs the couch back in place to cover the stain. “I think Montparnasse can take care of it now,” he says. “You ready to go?”

Jehan nods, pulling his keys from his pocket. He takes the apartment key off his key ring and sets it on the counter. He looks up at Bahorel and Courfeyrac with a determined look on his face. “Let’s get out of here,” he says.

Courfeyrac can’t get them out of there fast enough.

* * *

 

After they get Jehan’s stuff stashed away in Courfeyrac’s apartment, Grantaire swings by to whisk Jehan away for a couple of hours. He tells Jehan that he’s taking him out to lunch and then to a foreign film that just started playing at some run-down theater across town. It’s clear to everyone involved that he’s offering Jehan a quiet respite from everything that’s happened, and it’s equally clear that a few hours alone with his oldest friend is exactly what Jehan needs right now.

Which is just as well, because Courfeyrac could benefit from some time with Enjolras and Combeferre himself. Once Grantaire and Jehan are gone, he locks up his apartment and heads down a few blocks to theirs. Combeferre and Enjolras, while clearly not expecting Courfeyrac, aren’t surprised by his sudden appearance, and once they’ve both been assured that the move out of Montparnasse’s apartment went smoothly, they listen to Courfeyrac rant.

And he has a lot to rant about because there was a fucking blood stain on the carpet and as much as Courfeyrac would like to think that this whole mess is over and done with now that Jehan is out of Montparnasse’s apartment and out of his clutches, he knows that’s not the case. Now they get to deal with the aftermath. Now they get to deal with the ups and downs of Jehan’s emotional recovery as well as whatever repercussions they’ll face from Montparnasse—and he knows there’ll be repercussions. He’s not a fool. Montparnasse isn’t just going to let Jehan go, however much he might like to pretend that’s the case.

No, they get to look forward to harassing phone calls and text messages and emails. If they’re lucky, that’s all Montparnasse will do, but Courfeyrac doesn’t have much faith in luck at the moment and admits to fears of stalking or violent assaults against Jehan or any of the rest of them—fears that Montparnasse will target Grantaire or Eponine or her siblings as a way to get back at Jehan or try to frighten him into moving back in.

Combeferre and Enjolras are quick to assuage those fears, but Courfeyrac knows his friends are smart. He knows they share his fears and that their placating words are merely words meant to comfort him.

It’s all a lie, but it’s a lie he appreciates nonetheless. It’s a lie that assures him that Jehan isn’t in this alone anymore.

After a few hours, Courfeyrac heads back to his place, and when he gets home, Jehan and Grantaire are still out and the apartment is empty. Jehan’s suitcases and the trash bags stuffed with the rest of his belongings occupy a corner of his living room. He starts clearing space in his apartment for Jehan. He doesn’t know how long the poet will stay—or even if he wants to stay—but he doesn’t want Jehan to feel like a guest, doesn’t want Jehan to feel like he owes Courfeyrac for any of this or feel indebted to him.

Making room for Jehan in the apartment is perhaps the easiest thing he’s ever done—far easier than when he made room for Marius more than a year ago. This all feels natural. It feels right, like the space for Jehan in his life has always existed. By the time Grantaire drops Jehan off for the night, Courfeyrac has cleared out space in the bathroom for his toiletries and space in the closet and the dresser for his clothes. He even made sure to clear off some of his bookshelf space for Jehan’s books.

“Oh, Courf,” Jehan says after Grantaire has left and he notices the empty shelves and puts two and two together. “You didn’t have to do any of that. You—”

“I want you to be comfortable here,” he says. “You don’t have to tiptoe around me. You deserve some space to call your own and I’m happy to give it to you for as long as you want it.”

“You might regret saying that,” Jehan says. “Give me an inch and I might take a mile.”

“It’s nothing I’m not willing to give,” Courfeyrac says. “Do you want something to drink? Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Copious amounts of booze?”

“Hot chocolate sounds nice, actually,” Jehan says.

“I’ve got these really great Almond Joy creamers,” he says, waving Jehan towards the sofa while he heads into the kitchen to prepare the hot chocolate. “They’re _amazing_ in hot chocolate.”

“Yeah, if you like coconut,” Jehan says.

Courfeyrac pokes his head out of the kitchen. “You don’t like coconut? What’s _wrong_ with you?”

“I can give you a long list or a short list,” Jehan says, “but a dislike of coconut isn’t on either of them.”

Courfeyrac laughs. “I guess that just means more for me.”

Once the hot chocolate is done, Courfeyrac carries two mugs into the living room and passes one off to Jehan.

 “So, how are you feeling?” he asks, taking a seat on the arm chair opposite of the sofa. “I know today couldn’t have been easy for you.”

Jehan sinks back into the couch and cradles his mug of hot chocolate close to his chest. “I feel…fragile,” he says after a moment.

“Fragile?” He’s never seen Jehan as anything remotely fragile. There’s too much steel in his spine, too much courage in his heart.

“It’s not a word I’d usually use to describe myself,” he says. “But right now? It’s the only one that seems to fit. After everything that’s happened over the last few months, I feel empty and thin and ready to crack like untempered glass. With Mont, I just kept waiting for things to get better, kept waiting for him to change back to the man I knew, but it never happened, and in the meantime, he kept demanding more and more of me—and I think I got to the point where I had nothing outside of myself left to give, so I started to dig inside myself. Heart, liver, lungs—he could have it all, as long as I had the promise that one day he’d change back. And now that I know that he won’t? I’m just empty. I have nothing left to fill me up inside, to fortify me or give me strength. A single blow from him now would shatter me, I think.” He shakes his head and gives a sad sort of smile to his mug. “I never thought I’d be this weak.”

“You’ve never been weak,” Courfeyrac says. “And you’re not now. You’re burned out, Jehan. You’ve spent, what, the last two months in an abusive relationship. You’ve dealt with a man who demanded everything from you, who wanted to hollow you out and make a doll of you. A weak man would have given in. You got out. There’s a difference there.”

Jehan shakes his head. “But I did give in. I gave in and I gave up and I gave him everything I had. I could have ended this long before we ever got to this point. I should have walked out the first time he hit me.”

“You loved him,” Courfeyrac says. “And you were willing to fight for that love. You are not to be blamed because he was willing to use your heart against you.”

Jehan’s quiet for a long moment. “I hope you’re okay if I don’t quite believe that yet.”

“Take all the time you need,” he says.

“I’m such a fucking mess right now,” Jehan says, tilting his head back. “I feel like crying and shouting and tearing my hair out. I should be happy! I should be relieved that all of this is over, but I’m not. I mean, I am—I’m glad I’m out of there, but I’m—I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

“You broke up with your boyfriend,” Courfeyrac says. “The man was an asshole to you, but he wasn’t always and your feelings for him were sincere. It’s okay to mourn the loss of that, Jehan. It’s okay to be sad.”

“And will you be okay with this?”

“Okay with what?”

“Watching me mourn a relationship when you’ve always wanted that sort of relationship with me?”

“You go right for the gut, don’t you?” Courfeyrac says, which gets another flicker of a smile out of Jehan. “Look, whatever feelings I have for you or will have for you, you are, first and foremost, my friend—and as with all my friends, I want you to be happy and I want you to be okay with doing whatever it takes to make you happy. And if that means we spend the next two weeks sitting on the couch together watching sappy historical romances and binge eating Ben and Jerry’s while you use my sweaters as snot rags whenever you sob your eyes out over Montparnasshole, then that’s what we’ll do. My feelings for you are not the issue here.”

“It’s not fair to you to ask you to ignore your own emotions like that.”

“And it’s not fair to you to ask you to grapple with my feelings for and about you when you should be focused on recovering.”

“Recovering,” Jehan repeats.

“Abusive relationships are traumatic experiences,” Courfeyrac says. “They damage every part of you, and getting over that and moving on is like recovering from a serious illness. It takes time and you need to go easy on yourself. Learning how to trust again after you’ve been hurt like this isn’t easy.”

“You’re a lot wiser than I think people give you credit for,” Jehan says.

“Thank you,” he says with a laugh. “Will you please tell Enjolras that? He keeps saying that I need to act my age more often. He doesn’t realize that my actions are perfectly typical for a twenty-one year old and he’s the one who acts like he’s fifty.”

That startles a laugh out of Jehan but it’s not long before the laughter turns into a yawn.

“If you’re tired,” Courfeyrac says, “I changed the sheets on the bed for you.”

Jehan give him one of his stubborn looks and it makes Courfeyrac smile because as fragile as Jehan might feel right now, he’s still got steel in his spine.“I am not kicking you out of your bed, Courf.”

Courfeyrac waggles his eyebrows at him. “Who said anything about kicking me out?”

He laughs when Jehan lobs a throw pillow at his head. He’s got remarkable aim.

“I am not sleeping in your bed,” Jehan says again. “You’ve done more than enough for me already. I’ll be fine on the couch.”

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “You’re hurt,” he says. “And while this couch is plenty comfy when you’re feeling just fine, it can get a little lumpy and your ribs are busted. So. You get the bed. We can renegotiate this later when you’re feeling better.”

“I—”

Jehan is cut off by the sound of his phone going off. He pulls it out of his pocket and he winces when he looks at the screen.

“Is that Montparnasse?” Courfeyrac asks.

Jehan nods. The phone still rings in his hand.

He wonders if Jehan feels hurt that it took this long for Montparnasse to notice he was gone.

“Do you feel ready to talk to him?” he asks.

When Jehan shakes his head, Courfeyrac takes the phone from his hand and presses the Ignore Call button. “He has no claim on your time anymore,” he says. “You can talk to him when _you_ are ready.”

Jehan nods but hesitates when Courfeyrac offers his phone back to him. “Would you mind just keeping that for the night?” he asks. “I just…if he calls back, I don’t know if I’ll be able to ignore it.”

Courfeyrac turns the phone off completely before setting it aside. He gives Jehan a bright smile. “I’m here to help.”

He gives Jehan a brief tour of the apartment, showing him the bathroom and the linen closet and helping find anything he might need and then he retreats back to the living room to give Jehan some space as he gets ready for bed. They last thing he wants is to crowd Jehan when Jehan isn’t ready to be crowded.  So he sets up camp on the sofa and pulls his laptop onto his lap and sifts through his Steam account to find a game to play to take his mind off everything that’s happened today. He cycles through a couple of games, trying to find the right combination of challenging and mind-numbing, before settling on Super Meatboy, which has always been the sort of game that he can loose track of time while playing.

He’s been playing for nearly two hours when he hears water in the bathroom running. He pauses his game—Meatboy was just about to run into a buzzsaw, so he’d probably going to have to restart anyway—and he twists around to see Jehan shuffling out of the bathroom. His hair is done up in a loose pony tail and his long sleeved t-shirt and plaid navy pajama pants turn out to be one of his more sedate outfits.

“Jehan,” he says. “Do you need something?”

“I can’t sleep,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. His shirt sleeve shifts, exposing bruises around his forearm.

“Do you want to play a couple of rounds or something?” he asks. “Might help to get your mind to quiet down.”

“No, I…” He hesitates but Courfeyrac doesn’t press him. “This is really stupid,” he says eventually, “but I really…I’d rather not be alone right now. I…would you mind—I really hate to impose on you like this after you’ve already done so much for me—but would you mind just staying with me? I mean, just until I fall asleep. I hardly expect you to just sit around with me all night and Mont’s always said that I fidget in my sleep, but I just…I don’t think I can sleep on my own right now. Pathetic as that is.”

“It’s not pathetic,” Courfeyrac says, exiting out of his game. “And I don’t mind at all. Do you mind if we just sleep in the same bed? I don’t mind sharing.”

Jehan just shrugs.

He makes quick work of brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed and when he goes into the bedroom, he finds that Jehan has already claimed the left side of the bed and he’s supplemented Courfeyrac’s bedding with a couple of quilts of his own, which makes Courfeyrac smile.

“Got enough blankets there?” he asks, stripping down to his undershirt and boxers.

“Shut up,” Jehan says, burrowing down into the blankets. “I’ve got this thing about my blankets having enough weight to them, okay?”

Courfeyrac climbs into bed. “I’m just surprised you’re not overheating already.” He reaches over and turns off the light. He’s acutely aware of the fact that he hasn’t shared his bed with anyone other than a one night stand in a long time. Hell, it’s even been a long time since he’s shared his bed with a one night stand. They lay side-by-side for a long moment. Neither of them touching, neither of them speaking. Courfeyrac is about to say something—anything, really—to break the weird silent tension between them when Jehan cuddles against his side.

“Is this okay?” Jehan asks. “If it’s weird, I can move.”

Courfeyrac shifts so that he can wrap his arm around Jehan’s shoulders and pulls him closer. “Not weird at all,” he says.

Jehan makes a contented noise and falls asleep within minutes and Courfeyrac is lulled into sleep not long after by the steady rhythm of Jehan’s breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends. Happy Tuesday. I'm still overwhelmed by the response to last week's chapter :D You guys are seriously amazing and wonderful and I love hearing from each and every one of you :)
> 
> Next chapter will probably be up next Tuesday.


	56. Chapter Fifty-Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras and Combeferre babysit Gavroche

It’s only with mild reluctance and half-hearted protest that Enjolras follows Combeferre to Eponine and Grantaire’s apartment on Wednesday night. Combeferre is ostensibly “babysitting” Eponine’s siblings tonight while she pulls a late shift at the restaurant where she waits table and Grantaire finishes his shift at the art supply store. Enjolras won’t say that he’s been avoiding Grantaire since Courfeyrac (rather rudely) pointed out that Enjolras had a crush—a crush of all things. He’s never had a crush in his life, despite what Combeferre claims about his celebrity crush over seven years ago, and he likes to think himself above something as simple and insipid sounding as _a crush_ —but suddenly having his conflicting and alarmingly strong emotions about Grantaire phrased in such a way...well, it’s made him think.

He’s not sure he likes where those thoughts lead.

In the meantime, he’s not exactly comfortable spending time alone with Grantaire—in the few conversations they’ve had in the interim, Enjolras recalls blushing a lot (and he doesn’t exactly care that it’s an unconscious reflex that he has absolutely no control over because he’s blonde and pale and when he blushes it’s noticeable and mortifying)—and he agrees to come with Combeferre only after being reassured (patronizingly) by Combeferre that Grantaire would be out for the night.

“Eponine just wants to make sure that there’s some kind of responsible adult home while she’s at work tonight,” he says, for what’s probably the tenth time as they walk the half-dozen blocks to their apartment.

It’s moot to be debating at this point, because it’s not like he’s going to turn around and go home after walking this far, but he worries that if he’s not debating and protesting, then Combeferre might start prying into the real reason for his reluctance. (And while Combeferre prying is better than Courfeyrac prying—and thankfully Courfeyrac hasn’t had time to pry since Jehan moved in with him a few days ago—Enjolras would still prefer no prying at all.) “Isn’t her sister sixteen?” he asks. “That’s plenty old to stay home alone.”

“Azelma is sixteen and Gavroche is twelve and Eponine worries that neither of them really understand that she means it when she tells them they’re supposed to stay in for the night,” Combeferre says. “Apparently last week, Gav just up and left in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep and he was bored and Azelma didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with that.”

“I don’t suppose she could lock them in, could she?”

“I think the social worker would frown upon that,” he said. “Besides, this will give us plenty of time to talk about the next protest. Gavroche and Azelma are pretty self-sufficient. We’re mostly just providing adult supervision.”

The social worker—a harried looking woman in her thirties—is just leaving when Enjolras and Combeferre arrive. Combeferre stops to talk to her for a few minutes, undoubtedly leaving a good impression because leaving good impressions is something he excels at, and Enjolras sets up a work area in the living room while Eponine hurries to get ready for work.

Enjolras gets the impression that this visit with the social worker wasn’t planned and he thinks that maybe he should say something reassuring to Eponine—he’s read enough custody battle case files to know that custody has been granted to much less-fit guardians than Eponine—but he doesn’t really know how to broach the subject. Instead, he just lets her do her thing in peace.

Besides, he has work to do. Since the awareness run on Saturday, he’s gotten a slew of emails from people wanting to know what they can do to help the sex workers who have been attacked. He’s honestly a little surprised that he’s gotten as many emails as he has—he’s used to people overlooking his causes—but he’s grateful for it. He has to respond to each email to let the sender know that they’re working on organizing a protest—something passive, on Combeferre’s assistance, because Combeferre says they can’t afford to get arrested again, which is true—and to direct their attention to the website Sandra has set up to collect funds to help pay for the medical bills of the survivors.

He’s waiting for his laptop to connect to the apartment’s wifi when Gavroche collapses next to him on the couch. Enjolras has never really known what he’s expected to do with children, so he ignores him.

“Grantaire’s not here you know,” Gavroche says after a moment of silence.

He glances at the twelve-year-old from the corner of his eye. “I know,” he says.

“I figured you only came for him.”

“I came to work with Combeferre on—wait, why would I only come for him?”

Gavroche rolls his eyes. “Everyone can see you two making moon cow eyes at each other when you think the other’s not looking. It’s disgusting.”

“Moon cow eyes? What on earth are moon cow eyes? You know what, never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”

Gavroche shakes his head in a condescending sort of way. It’s far too old of a gesture for such a small boy. “It’s not like it’s bad, you know.”

“It’s not like what’s bad?” He pulls open his email and hopes the kid gets the idea that he doesn’t really want to talk.

“Liking another dude,” Gavroche says. “Some people are funny about that, but it’s not like you’re hurting anyone. Besides, Grantaire cool. He taught me how to hotwire a car.”

Enjolras feels a little resentful that a child is trying to give him dating advice. Not that he needs dating advice because he’s not dating anyone. When Combeferre finishes talking to the social worker, Enjolras hopes his friend will come save him from Gavroche, but Combeferre lets himself into Eponine’s room instead.

Useless best friend.

“Don’t you have homework to do?” Enjolras asks.

Gavroche shakes his head. “So why aren’t you dating Grantaire?”

Enjolras says the first thing which comes to mind, which is, “Why aren’t you?”

“That’s sick, man,” Gavroche says, clearly delighting in the way Enjolras blushes. “Grantaire’s _old_. I’m only twelve. You’re contributing to the sexualization of minors,” he says, his tone clearly indicating that he’s parroting the phrase.

Enjolras is spluttering for an answer when Eponine comes out of her room—Combeferre following behind her, frowning—and she gives Gavroche a look that can only be described as “older sisterly.”

“Calm yourself, Enjolras,” she says. “The little twerp is just trying to a rise out of you.”

“Don’t call me a twerp,” Gavroche says. “The social worker wouldn’t like it.”

“Well, the social worker isn’t here, is she?”

That, inexplicably, makes Gavroche smile.

Eponine takes a deep breath. She checks her purse, as though making sure she has everything she needs. “Try to make sure Azelma eats something,” she says to Combeferre. “And make sure they both do their homework, please.”

“We don’t need a babysitters,” Gavroche says. “Especially not these two.”

“Oh please,” she says. “And give Enjolras his phone back.”

“He doesn’t have my phone,” Enjolras says, right as Gavroche pulls the phone out of the pocket of his hoody. “You little twerp.”

“You should keep a better eye on your shit, dude,” Gavroche says. “And it’s not like I was going to keep it.”

Eponine rolls her eyes again. “No, you were just going to send embarrassing and badly spelled messages on it,” she says. “And don’t swear.”

When she leaves, Combeferre makes dinner while Gavroche continues to pester Enjolras. They manage to coax Azelma out of her room and convince her to eat—she’s a little too thin to be healthy and she eyes Combeferre and Enjolras both with distrust, which makes Enjolras wonder what exactly has happened to her—and once she’s done eating, she retreats back to her door, slamming it in her wake.

“Don’t mind her,” Gavroche says. “She just gets pissy around men.”

After dinner, Combeferre offers to help Gavroche with his homework while Enjolras responds to more emails and sends some emails to city officials to get clearance for this next protest. While Combeferre is looking over Gavroche’s math homework, the twelve year old decides to bother Enjolras again.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Organizing a protest.”

“Is this about the dead hookers?” Gavroche asks. “Ponine and Grantaire were talking about them the other day.”

“Sex workers,” he says, automatically correcting him. “And only two of them are dead. The others survived. But yes, the protest is about that.”

Gavroche continues to ask questions—some of them incredibly insightful considering the boy is only twelve and his parents don’t seem like socially conscious people—and Enjolras explains to him the nature of the protest and the importance of things like passive resistance. Gavroche seems fascinated by all of it and eventually declares that he likes Enjolras.

“Courf told me you weren’t so bad once you got that stick out of your ass,” Gavroche adds.

Enjolras decides that he needs to have a conversation with Courfeyrac about what constitutes as appropriate conversation topics for a twelve year old (and stress the fact that his ass not be involved in any conversation with anyone). When Combeferre finishes looking over Gavroche’s homework, he queues up something on Netflix to keep him occupied while he and Enjolras work. Despite Gavroche’s best pleading, they don’t let him watch anything with an R rating.

It’s around 10:30 when the door swings open, revealing Grantaire with a bag of take out.

“Hey, Ep, I brought home some—” The door shuts behind him and he takes in the scene in front of him. “You’re not Ep.”

“They’re supposed to be babysitting,” Gavroche says. “But they’re not so bad.”

“Not so bad because they let you stay up till ten-thirty,” he says. “You’ve got school tomorrow. Get to bed.”

“But—”

“Bed,” Grantaire says.

Gavroche flops off the couch and lays on his back on the floor. “Passive resistance!” he shouts, glaring at Grantaire.

Enjolras’s lips twitch.

“No one should ever leave children with you,” Grantaire says, levelling a look at Enjolras.

He blushes. He is so sick of the damn blushing.

But Grantaire’s hardly paying attention because he’s turned his attention back to Gavroche. “I’ll give you ten bucks if you go to bed right now,” Grantaire says.

“Make it twenty.”

“Fifteen,” he says.

Gavroche hesitates for a moment before he hauls himself up off the floor and holds his hand out for the money. Grantaire doles out the cash and Gavroche scurries away before Grantaire can change his mind.

“Is it a good idea to bribe him like that?” Combeferre asks.

Grantaire shrugs. “Probably not, but the Thenardiers always respond well to bribes. Besides, he’s in bed now, and that’s all that really matters.”

“I thought you were working late tonight,” Enjolras says. From the corner of his eye, he can see Combeferre smirking at him.

“The shop was dead by eight-thirty,” Grantaire says, flopping down on the couch and toeing off his shoes. “So we closed up early. I stopped by Courf’s place on my way back to see him and Jehan and we went out and got food at that new burger joint.” He holds out his bag of take out. “Want some?”

Enjolras shakes his head, his mind settling on Jehan and Courf because that, at least, he can talk about without blushing like a complete idiot. “How’s Jehan doing?”

“He’s all settled in at Courf’s place,” he says. “It was a good suggestion on Courf’s part, because they’re great roommates for each other, especially right now. Jehan’s still reeling over everything that’s gone down with Montparnasse.” He pulls a burger out of the bag and takes a bite before saying, “I think he and Courf might be sleeping together.”

Apparently even talking about Courf and Jehan isn’t enough to keep him from blushing because he can feel his face flame.

“They’re what?” Combeferre says.

“Get your minds out of the gutter,” Grantaire says, though he’s smiling like the innuendo was intentional. Knowing him, it probably was. “I don’t think they’re having sex, but I’m pretty sure they’re sharing the bed.”

“Have you been getting the same calls that Eponine is?” Combeferre asks.

“You better believe it,” Grantaire says.

“What calls?” Enjolras asks.

“Parnasse,” he says. “He keeps calling, trying to get a hold of Jehan. I don’t know about Ep, but I’ve stopped answering his calls. That does mean I get treated to regular, verbally abusive voicemails, though.”

Enjolras looks between the two of them. “Has Jehan been getting calls like that?” He wonders if he should look into what they need to do to file a restraining order against Montparnasse.

“He didn’t say,” Grantaire said, “but I can’t imagine that he’s not.”

“The messages aren’t threatening, per se,” Combeferre says. “At least not the ones that Eponine is getting. Mostly it’s just him swearing at her.”

Grantaire nods. “That’s about what I’m getting, too,” he says. “I mean, we should still be cautious, but I don’t really think we need to worry about anything. Not yet, at least.”

None of them seem to want to entertain the possibilities of what might happen if Montparnasse’s messages do become threatening.

“Either way,” Grantaire says, “Courf seems to be taking good care of Jehan, and that’s what really matters.”

Enjolras thinks that Grantaire looks like a weight has been lifted from him now that Jehan’s somewhere safe. “Good. I’m sure Courf will let us know if they need anything.”

Grantaire turns to Combeferre. “So,” he says, “what’s got you so glum in the face?”

Enjolras frowns because he had noticed that Combeferre was a bit quieter and a bit more somber than usual since they got to the apartment, but he didn’t think that anything was necessarily wrong.

“It’s nothing,” Combeferre says.

“Everything okay with you and Eponine?” Grantaire asks.

Combeferre’s refusal to look at Grantaire is answer enough.

Enjolras peers at his oldest friend. “I thought everything was going well between you too,” he says.

“They are,” Combeferre says. “I’m just...it’s stupid and it’s all in my head and I told her there was no pressure, so I made this mess myself.”

“No pressure?” Grantaire says. “Shit, Ferre, you’re not pressuring her about sex, are you? Because that’s a really dick thing to do—fuck, that’s more than a dick thing—”

“Whoa, okay,” Combeferre says. “Calm down. I would _never_ pressure her for sex. I just—no. You don’t do that to people.”

“Sorry,” Grantaire says ruefully. “Didn’t mean to flip like that. I just...yeah. It wouldn’t be the first time one of her boyfriends have pulled the ‘if you love me, baby, you’ll sleep with me card,’ so I guess I’m a little protective.”

“No, no,” Combeferre says. “I’m glad she has someone looking after her.”

“So what’s going on?” Grantaire asks. “She hasn’t complained to me about anything.”

“It’s…fine,” Combeferre says. “It’ll work itself out.”

“Ferre,” Enjolras says. “You’ve listened to Courf and me both rant about things. You know you’re allowed to do the same.”

“I kind of accidentally told her I love her last month,” Combeferre says eventually.

Grantaire laughs out loud.

“Don’t you think it might be a bit...soon to say something like that?” Enjolras says. He doesn’t actually know when it’s appropriate to say things like that in relationships. Where is Courf when you need him? This is very much a Courf conversation.

Combeferre groans. “I know it’s soon, but I feel how I feel and that’s not changing. And it wasn’t like I was planning on telling her. It just sort of...slipped out.”

Grantaire is still laughing and Enjolras grabs a throw pillow and lobs it his head. “Go on,” Enjolras says.

“I told her I loved her and I told her that I didn’t have any expectation that she say it back,” Combeferre says, “but it’s been a month and she hasn’t said it back. It just makes me wonder, that’s all.”

Grantaire manages to stop laughing and he tosses the pillow back at Enjolras. “That’s all this is?” he asks.

“This is a big thing,” Enjolras says. “Withholding affection like that—don’t you think that’s unfair to Combeferre?”

Enjolras will never claim to be some sort of relationship expert, but he is an expert at what withholding affection does to people—having put up with it for his entire childhood from his parents—and he’s not going to sit back and watch this happen to Combeferre.

“Not saying _I love you_ to someone is hardly withholding affection,” Grantaire says.

“He has every right to know that his feelings are reciprocated,” Enjolras says. “She can’t just use him.”

“She’s not using him,” Grantaire says. “You can still want to be in a relationship with someone before you know if you love them or not.”

“Well, if he knows, shouldn’t she know?” Enjolras says.

Combeferre and Grantaire both stare at him.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Combeferre says.

“You could be in love with someone for months—years, even—without the other person knowing how they feel,” Grantaire says, giving Enjolras an inscrutable look.

“Like I said,” Combeferre says, “this is mostly in my head. I just—I shouldn’t have this expectation, and I’ll get over it.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “What I’m about to say does not get repeated,” he says. “Especially to Joly, because he gossips like an eighty year old woman, but you need to consider the possibility that Eponine hasn’t said anything not because the feelings aren’t there, but because it’s an emotionally charged word and it scares her.”

“Meaning what?” Enjolras asks.

“Meaning Eponine has never told any of her other boyfriends that she loves them,” he says. “And maybe it was because she didn’t love them, but I’ve known her since we were kids, and I’m not sure that’s the case. She’s not used to being vulnerable and loving someone like that requires a lot of vulnerability.” He turns to Combeferre. “Just be patient,” he says. “She’ll figure it out. She always does.”

Combeferre nods, looking a little more at ease, and for that, Enjolras is grateful.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends. Happy Tuesday :) Thank you, as always, for being awesome. I love hearing from you guys--you never cease to brighten my day!
> 
> Next chapter might (that's a super tenative might) be up on Friday, but will most likely be up next Tuesday.


	57. Chapter Fifty-Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire waits about a week before he whisks Jehan away for a quiet afternoon alone.

Grantaire waits about a week before he whisks Jehan away for a quiet afternoon spent meandering at an art exhibit that just opened up at a decently sized gallery downtown. He’s watched Jehan for days, watching for signs of stress and frustration that he knew would come. All of their friends know the poet is working through his issues but Grantaire knows him best and Grantaire knows that Jehan needs quiet time to himself to work through this. So even though Jehan is clearly touched by the small gestures of kindness and healing their friends had made for him—the cupcakes Marius baked him from scratch, the texts from Joly listing different methods of self-care, flowers from Cosette and Musichetta, the invitations to go out for drinks or coffee or whatever from Bahorel and Feuilly, and countless other kind gestures—Grantaire knows that by the end of the week, Jehan really just needs some time and some space away from it all.

Which is why the gallery is the perfect choice, because they can both meander around and appreciate the art in their own way and their own pace and not have to worry about entertaining each other. Jehan was one of the first people Grantaire met who actually _enjoyed_ doing stuff like this with him. Eponine, for all that she’s a fantastic friend, has always been more inclined to want to _do_ things instead of just looking at things and the handful of times he has dragged her to a gallery, she hovered impatiently nearby whenever she thought Grantaire was taking too long. He doesn’t have that problem with Jehan. Jehan is content to wander off on his own and has been known to spend ages standing in front of a single painting or sculpture, completely caught up in it. And on the occasions when Jehan finishes before Grantaire is ready to go, he’s perfectly happy to sit on a bench and pull out his notebook and scribble verses while Grantaire finishes up.

For the first little while at the gallery, Grantaire stays close enough to keep an eye on Jehan. He tries not to hover—Jehan hates hovering as much as he does—but he’s been worried about Jehan for months and he needs the reassurance that his friend is doing okay. When Jehan catches Grantaire studying _him_ instead of the art for the third time, he heaves an exaggerated sigh and makes a shooing gesture at Grantaire. Grantaire smiles, dips his head in an apology, and wanders off, giving them both some space.

After a few hours at the gallery, Jehan finds Grantaire at a surrealist painting done by a local artist whom Grantaire admires and suggests that they get a bite when Grantaire’s ready to leave.

Grantaire pulls his gaze away from the painting. There was something about the use of red in this particular piece that caught his attention. “Are you ready to go?”

“I can wait,” Jehan says.

He studies Jehan for a moment. He’s still a little too thin and a little too pale for Grantaire’s comfort. He doesn’t know for certain, but he suspects there are still bruises on Jehan’s skin. For all Jehan says he can wait, it’d probably be better for him to sit for a while and to eat. So Grantaire shakes his head. “I’m getting hungry,” he says. “There’s a Greek place up the street?”

“I do love me some gyros,” Jehan said.

The café is mostly empty when they arrive, having gotten there midway between the lunch and dinner rushes. Jehan grabs them a table while Grantaire places their orders at the counter.

“Food’ll be out in about ten minutes,” Grantaire says, taking a seat across from Jehan

Jehan smiles. It’s a soft, small smile. “Thanks for doing all this for me,” he says.

“I could tell you were starting to feel smothered by the others.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate what they’re doing.”

“You can appreciate it and still feel smothered,” Grantaire points out.

Jehan hangs his head with a bashful smile. “I just don’t want to seem ungrateful. Everyone has been so thoughtful.”

“Not to mention those cupcakes Marius made were _really_ good.”

Jehan laughs a little. “I didn’t peg Marius as much of a baker.”

“Eponine told me he’s obsessed with Pinterest.”

“Ah, well, we all have our vices.”

A waitress comes out with their food and a smile.

“So how are things going with Montparnasse?” Grantaire asks as Jehan arranges his gyro to keep from spilling everything everywhere. “Is he bothering you too much?”

He thinks it’d be pointless just to ask if Montparnasse were bothering him. He knows the answer to that question.

Jehan sighs. “It’s all been digital—emails or messages on my phone. Feuilly showed me how to rig my email filters to catch all Mont’s emails, but there’s not much I can do about my phone.”

“You could try getting a new number,” Grantaire says.

But Jehan just looks at him. “One,” he says, “You know as well as I do that getting a new number would only be a slight inconvenience for Mont. That’s very much something he knows how to get around. Two, to get a new number, I’d have to get my dad on board with it since I’m still on my parents’ plan and in order to get my dad on board with it, I’d have to tell him what’s going on—and I really don’t need to hear my dad go on and on about how I was probably asking for it and how it was right of Mont to try to keep me in line like that.”

“I’d forgotten how much of an ass your dad is.”

“Lucky you,” Jehan says dryly. “He’s already annoyed with me as it is. I either need to get a job or he needs to give me a larger monthly allowance and he’s not exactly keen on either option. He and I have been talking through my mom all week, which isn’t fair to her, but Mont really did pay for a lot for me and with him gone, I need to make up the difference somehow.”

“I thought Courf was letting you stay at his palce for free.”

“Oh, he is,” Jehan says, “but I’m not a freeloader and I’d be fine getting a job but my dad keeps threatening to cut me off completely if I do and minimum wage alone isn’t going to cut it and—”

“And it’ll work out,” Grantaire says. He usually doesn’t have much optimism about the job market, but they have friends with connections to places. Feuilly alone works three jobs and could probably help Jehan get hired at at least one of them if needed. “Don’t worry about the money for now. If it’s still a problem over the summer, I’m sure Feuilly can hook you up with any of a half-dozen jobs and I could probably convince my boss to hire you. You’ve got other things to worry about right now.”

“I wish I didn’t,” Jehan says.

“Is Montparnasse texting you a lot?” he asks. He and Eponine have both gotten handfuls of drunk texts and voicemails, all demanding that they talk to Jehan and make him go back. Grantaire only had to listen to one before deciding that he was just going to delete all future messages without bothering to read or listen to them.

“Only all the time,” Jehan says. “I don’t let myself read them anymore. I made that mistake a few days ago. I thought I was ready to, you know? That I had enough distance or whatever. Spoiler alert: I didn’t.”

“What’d he have to say?”

“He misses me. He wants me back. He’s so sorry for everything that happened and if I just give him a chance he’ll explain everything. He still loves me. I’m the best thing that ever happened to him.” Jehan sighs. “I felt awful for hours afterward. I had to skip one of my classes because I couldn’t stop crying.”

Grantaire fidgets in his seat. “You know you can’t go back, right?” he says because he knows how common it is for abuse victims to go back to their abusers and he knows theoretically that Jehan could make that decision, but he’s really not sure that he could handle watching Jehan go back to Montparnasse after everything that’s happened.

“I know, I know,” Jehan says. “I just—ugh. It’s just hard, that’s all. I’m allowed to think it’s hard, aren’t I?”

“Of course,” Grantaire says. “Just like I’m allowed to worry and nag and be terrified at the idea of you even thinking about going back to him.”

Jehan stares at the table for a moment before looking up. “If I did go back—not that I’m planning to, not at all, I just—if I did go back, would you still be my friend?”

Jehan’s voice is small and Grantaire’s stomach twists to hear it. He doesn’t like hearing Jehan sound so unsure of himself.

“Let me make this clear,” he says. “I don’t trust Montparnasse with you for a second anymore. If you decide to go back, I’m moving into his apartment with you.” That makes Jehan laugh and Grantaire smiles at the sound. “But if you decide to go back, I’m also going to do whatever the fuck I can to convince you that that’s a very very bad idea.”

“I made up my mind,” Jehan says. “I’m not going back. I’m just weird and needy right now. Don’t mind me.”

“You’re allowed to be weird and needy,” he says. “Hell, I’m practically the king of weird and needy. I get it.” He takes a bite of his gyro and swallows. “How are things with Courfeyrac?”

“Good,” Jehan says. “Really good. He’s been _amazing_ about all of this. I don’t even know how to begin to thank him.”

“I know you two have been sharing a bed,” he says. “Seems to me that’s a pretty good way to thank him.”

Jehan rolls his eyes. “Get your mind out of the trash,” he says. “It’s not like that at all. I’m just not sleeping well right now. I mean, you know how I get. I used to share a bed with you in high school whenever you stayed the night at my place.”

“And I always woke up with none of the blankets because you’ve got that weird thing about your blankets having the proper weight.”

“At least I don’t snore.”

“Does Courfeyrac snore?”

He shakes his head. “And he usually gets really hot when he sleeps, so he doesn’t mind that I steal most of the blankets during the night. It’s like we were meant to sleep together.”

“And the truth comes out,” Grantaire says, raising his glass as though to offer a toast.

Jehan rolls his eyes again but he doesn’t deny anything.

“Out with it,” Grantaire says. “How are you feeling about him?”

“It’s…it’s effortless,” Jehan says. “I…we kissed about a month ago—I don’t remember if I told you—but it was seriously the most amazing kiss I’d ever had and Courf—ugh, Courf is just wonderful. He’s thoughtful and he’s kind and he’s patient. He can always cheer me up when I’m feeling down.  I mean, with Mont, there was always that bad boy undercurrent that you had to deal with and he was always unpredictable, even before things got, you know, really bad, but there’s none of that with Courf. He’s a sweetheart—I really don’t know how else to say it.”

“You know the way he feels about you hasn’t changed,” Grantaire points out.

“He’s been flirting with me since the day we met,” Jehan says. “He still does it now, sort of, only now it’s comfort-flirting. Does that make any sense? Regardless, I know how he feels.”

“And does he know how you feel?”

“No,” he says.

“I know you dated Montparnasse for more than a year and you two did that weird I-like-you-but-I’m-not-going-to-date-you thing for at least a year before that, but it’s okay to move on. It’s probably even good for you.”

“I know that,” Jehan says, “but I need to be sure of myself first. I don’t want to rush into things with Courf only to figure out three weeks later that I _don’t_ really have feelings for him but that I was just so messed up by everything that happened with Mont that I latched onto the first guy who was _nice_ to me. I don’t want to do that to him and I don’t want to do that to myself either. I’m not going to let myself rush into things. Courf is too important to me to treat him so cavalierly.”

Grantaire leans back in his seat. “How is it that you’re at least a year younger than all of our friends—two years younger than most of them—and yet you say wise old man shit like that all the time?”

“I have an old soul,” Jehan says.

“Well, Old Soul,” Grantaire says, “don’t forget that your _body_ is young and in its prime and you shouldn’t let that go to waste.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, friends? I am capable of getting my crap together to get a Friday chapter up :) To my American readers, Happy Fourth of July. Enjoy you shenanigans, but please be safe. (I really don't know who thought that making the Fourth a drinking holiday was a good idea considering it's also the holiday that we play around with explosives.) To everyone else, happy fourth of July and I hope the weather is lovely wherever you may be :)
> 
> Thanks, as always, for the comments and kudos and general awesomeness. For interested parties, I did update my writing [blog](http://www.kingess.dreamwidth.org) with two new things, so feel free to check it out if you want. Also, you're always more than welcome to come say hi on [tumblr](http://www.kingesstropolis.tumble.com).
> 
> You're all the best. Next chapter will be up on Tuesday :)


	58. Chapter Fifty-Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s easier than Courfeyrac would have expected to suddenly have Jehan living with him.

It’s easier than Courfeyrac would have expected to suddenly have Jehan living with him. They fall into an easy rhythm with day-to-day life. It’s not all flowers and sunshine, but Courfeyrac expected that from the beginning. No matter how awful Montparnasse treated Jehan, Jehan still had—still has, even—feelings for the man and he’s dealing with a  break up in the most brutal sense of the word. 

A break up that is not made an ounce easier for the way Montparnasse harasses him. Jehan never calls it harassment, but his phone rings almost incessantly at night. Jehan always refuses to answer the late-night phone calls and Courfeyrac would love to convince the poet not to listen to the voicemails that Montparnasse leaves, but he lets Jehan handle the break up in his own way. The messages are usually vaguely threatening and Courfeyrac can’t help but feel that Montparnasse only calls at night with the intention of disrupting Jehan’s sleep, like he’s trying to wear him down and break him or something. It’s gotten to the point that Jehan turns off his phone every night. His phone greets him in the morning with dozens of missed calls, voicemails, and text messages.

They do, at least, have the emails under control, thanks to some fancy computer work that Feuilly did for Jehan. Still, though, Jehan is taking a leave of absence from most forms of social media because they all have sucky harassment policies and don’t offer a decent way to block creepy exes.

“I didn’t realize that Montparnasse was going to act like such a twelve year old girl about this,” Courfeyrac says to Jehan one night over dinner. They take turns cooking and Courfeyrac loves coming home to see Jehan puttering in the kitchen. He likes how domestic they seem together.

“Don’t say that,” Jehan says, his lips twitching a little. “That’s an insult to twelve year old girls everywhere.”

Courfeyrac laughs.

Beyond all the harassment—which, thankfully, in the week and a half since Jehan left has yet to become anything seriously threatening or even gone beyond digital harassment—Jehan is still coping with the loss of the relationship and prone to fits of sadness. Courfeyrac will come home from classes and see Jehan hunched over on the couch, face tear-stained, as he tries to work out his emotions in writing. Courfeyrac will usually make him a cup of tea—he’s grateful for the years he lived with Combeferre because you can’t live with Combeferre without becoming a master tea brewer—and leave it on the coffee table and give Jehan some space for an hour or two. Once he feels that poet has had enough time with his sadness and once Jehan has stopped crying, Courfeyrac coaxes him out of his mood the best he can. Sometimes that’s cuddling on the couch while having a Netflix marathon, sometimes that’s going out to the Musain and getting a late night coffee with some of their friends, who are always thrilled to see them.

At night, they share the bed. Sometimes they snuggle and other times they sleep without touching each other at all, but it’s always…intimate, in its own way. Courfeyrac’s not a poet and he doesn’t have the words to say just how much he loves having Jehan in his life like this, how grateful he is that he can offer up comfort and strength and have that offer accepted every time.

Some days are still better than others, though.

It’s a Thursday night and Courfeyrac is late getting home. He and Enjolras and Combeferre were huddled up at the Musain, discussing the appeal to the school administration about the housing issue from last semester. Courfeyrac had texted Jehan to let him know that he’d be late and Jehan had responded with an _I’m fine here alone. Seriously. Take your time_ _J_ So Courfeyrac takes his time—takes far more time for himself than he has since Jehan has moved in with him, if he’s honest—and he enjoys his night out with his two closest friends. When he finally does leave the Musain, he passes Grantaire who’s on his way in.

“Is Enjolras still around?” Grantaire asks.

“He wanted to talk to Feuilly tonight, so he’s planning on sticking around till he gets off in a half hour.”

Grantaire nods, unconsciously patting his hair. “Okay,” he says. “Cool.”

Courfeyrac shakes his head as he walks home because things would be a lot easier for Grantaire and Enjolras if they just quit dancing around each other. Enjolras has developed an alarming tendency to blush whenever Grantaire does _anything_ —says something snarky, pretends to fall asleep in a meeting, laughs, runs his hand through his hair, picks food out of his teeth, anything—and Enjolras is so fair skinned that Courfeyrac is certain all that blushing can’t be good for him or his skin.

When he gets home, the first thing he hears when he opens the door is the sound of Jehan crying and his stomach twists because he hates seeing and hearing Jehan cry. It’s expected, of course, all things considered, but he doesn’t like it. And he doesn’t like that he was out enjoying himself while Jehan was feeling like this. He would have come home sooner if he’d known Jehan were having a bad night. He quietly shuts the door behind him and goes in search of Jehan. He finds him in the living room. He’s pacing back and forth, his movements agitated. He gives Courfeyrac a startled look, as though he didn’t hear him come in.

“Is that your dad?” Courfeyrac asks quietly, indicating to the phone. He knows that Jehan’s been on the phone with his mom all week trying to sort out his financial situation and he insinuated that he was going to have to talk to his dad eventually and that it was going to be five different kinds of a shit storm when he did.

But Jehan shakes his head.

Courfeyrac frowns. For a second, he’s not sure who Jehan could be talking to that would have him so upset but then it hits him and he feels absolutely sick that Jehan is on the phone with that bastard and that bastard is making Jehan cry.

“No, Mont,” Jehan says. “No—how could you even think—” He’s cut off with a wince and if Courfeyrac listens hard enough, he can hear Montparnasse shouting.

Fury fills him—the same fury he felt when he saw that blood stain on the carpet in Montparnasse’s apartment and at New Year’s when Montparnasse had his fucking hands all over Jehan when Jehan was covered in his fucking bruises. No. No. That son of a bitch doesn’t get to talk to Jehan like that. He doesn’t get to do this. Courfeyrac steps around the couch, approaching Jehan cautiously.

“Give me the phone, Jehan,” he says.

Jehan shakes his head.

Now that Courfeyrac is closer, he can see that there’s more anger than sadness in Jehan’s eyes.

“Mont, we’ve been over this—no, fuck, no. I never cheated on you, Mont, not even when you were beating the shit out of me every other day!”

Courfeyrac can hear swear words coming from the other line and Jehan’s anger doesn't stop his lip from quivering.

“Jehan,” Courfeyrac says. “You don’t owe him anything. You don’t have to listen to any of this. Give me the phone. I’m just going to hang up on him. I swear, I’m not going to say anything to him.”

Jehan ignores him. “So it’s my fault that everything fell apart? I kiss one guy— _once_ —and that means you get to—”

Courfeyrac can’t hear Montparnasse’s exact response, but he makes out the words _if you hadn’t been such a whore_ and he can’t listen to this anymore. He can’t.

“That’s it,” Courfeyrac says. He takes Jehan by the wrist, trying to be gentle but still firm. He just needs to get close enough that he can grab the phone, but Jehan is surprisingly strong and he twists out of Courfeyrac’s grip with ease. “Just give me the phone, Jehan.”

Jehan gives him a dirty look and Courfeyrac knows he deserves it. He doesn’t want to manhandle Jehan—and he hates himself a little for resorting to it, given everything that’s happened—but he can’t sit here and listen to Jehan get verbally abused over the phone by that asshole. He reaches out again, this time taking Jehan by the elbow, hoping that’ll be harder to twist out of, and he pulls Jehan towards him. He just wants the phone. Once Jehan is off the phone, then he can spend the next forever apologizing for this.

But Jehan jerks back out of his grip and places his hand against Courfeyrac’s chest and shoves him with enough force that he’s knocked against the couch. Jehan pins him with a furious look before brushing past him and retreating to the bedroom. The door slams behind him. Courfeyrac groans, rubbing his hand over his face.

“Way to fuck that one up, Courfeyrac,” he mutters to himself.

He pulls out his phone and searches through his contact list for Grantaire's number. He sends off a quick message. _Jehan’s on the phone with Montprasnasse. Please Help_.

There’s no response and he slouches against the couch cushions, feeling absolutely wretched. He knows he responded poorly. He knows he should have leashed his temper better and that he should have never tried to manhandle Jehan like that. Hell, he knew that while he was _doing_ it, but he just wanted to protect Jehan from that complete son of a bitch but instead he probably made it worse and seriously what’s wrong with him because Jehan would be completely justified in not forgiving him for that. He’ll let Jehan have the room to himself tonight and he’ll kip it out here on the couch and get completely drunk off his ass and then grovel for forgiveness in the morning.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by a knock on the door and when he opens it, he’s surprised to find that Grantaire has made it here from the Musain in record time.

He’s winded and he’s panting, but he’s here and Courfeyrac could kiss him he’s so thankful.

“Where is he?” Grantaire asks.

Courfeyrac jerks his head towards the bedroom door, and Grantaire is off without another word. Courfeyrac follows but lingers at the door when Grantaire barges in. He doesn’t feel he has the right to interfere anymore.

Jehan looks startled to see Grantaire here, but he doesn’t protest it. He tries to turn his back to Grantaire, but Grantaire catches him by the elbow and gently pulls him back around. He doesn’t say anything. He just _looks_ at Jehan.

After a moment or two, Jehan hands over the phone.

“I'm sorry,” Grantaire says loudly, cutting of Montparnasse from the other line. “But the call you’re trying to make is being disconnected. Have a nice day.”

Courfeyrac has never heard “have a nice day” sound so much like “fuck you.”

Jehan seems to wilt a little now that he’s off the phone, like all the adrenalin has deserted him and all he has left are bruised feelings. Grantaire sighs at him.

“Come on,” he says, gently steering Jehan towards the door. “Let’s get you something warm to drink.” He steers Jehan past Courfeyrac and towards the kitchen. “You coming, Courf?” he calls over the kitchen. “Otherwise I’m just going to muck up your kitchen.”

Courfeyrac follows, grateful to be included. Grantaire sits Jehan down at the table and sits down across from him. He turns to Courfeyrac. “Make us some tea, will you? And maybe pull out some whiskey, if you have it.”

Jehan gives Grantaire a startled look. “R, I’m sorry, but you don’t have to—”

Grantaire shakes his head. “The whiskey’s for you,” he said. “And maybe Courfeyrac—he looks like he could use a strong drink—but not for me. I’ve already had my one drink for the day.”

“Sorry,” Jehan says again as Courfeyrac puts water in the kettle.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Grantaire says. “Are you okay?”

Jehan shrugs.

“Did he threaten you?” Grantaire wants to know.

Courfeyrac turns and leans against the counter while the kettle is on the stove so he can watch them.

“Not really,” Jehan says. “I mean, there was a bunch of cryptic shit about needing to watch my back, but he’s always talked like that. Mostly he was just tearing into me because he thinks I was cheating on him for the last month or so that we were together.”

“That son of a bitch,” Grantaire mutters.

But Jehan shrugs again. “I mean, he’s not entirely off the mark, is he?” he says, nodding towards Courfeyrac.

“Jehan,” Grantaire says, “that was one kiss.”

“One kiss with Courfeyrac when I was in a relationship with Montparnasse,” Jehan says. “I shouldn’t have done it.” He looks at Courfeyrac. “I don’t want you to think that I regret that kiss, Courf, because it meant a lot me—still means a lot to me—but it wasn’t fair to you to kiss you while I was still with someone else and it wasn’t fair to Mont to kiss you while I was still with him. I think maybe he’s blowing things out of proportion, but I won’t pretend that he doesn’t have the right to be upset about that.”

Courfeyrac has no idea how Jehan can harbor so much guilt over a simple _kiss_ when Montparnasse was treating him like a punching bag.

Grantaire stares at Jehan. “You do know that whatever did or didn’t happen between you and Courfeyrac doesn’t begin to excuse what Parnasse has done to you, don’t you?”

Jehan refuses to meet Grantaire’s eyes.

“Shit, Jehan,” Grantaire says. “He’s manipulating you, don’t you see that? He’s using one mistake to make you think you deserved all of this. He _knows_ you, okay? He knows that you don’t like hurting people and he knows if he blows this way out of proportion, then he gets to play the victim and make you the bad guy. You’ve got to see how fucked up this is!”

Jehan remains silent and Courfeyrac is grateful when the kettle whistles behind him so he has something to distract himself with. He isn’t sure it’s possible to hate Montparnasse any more than he already did, but he’s beginning to rethink that assumption. He has absolutely no regrets about the kiss he shared with Jehan back at Christmas. None. He doesn’t think that Jehan was using him unfairly or taking advantage of his feelings. To think that Montparnasse is using that as another weapon against Jehan makes him want to hunt down the son of a bitch and punch him in the throat.

Repeatedly.

He pours the hot water into mugs and pulls out some tea bags. Despite Grantaire’s earlier suggestion, he leaves the whiskey out of it.

“All I’m saying,” Jehan says when Courfeyrac passes him a mug, “is that Mont has a right to be upset about that kiss. That’s all.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “This isn’t about whether or not he has the right to be upset because frankly I don’t give a flying fuck whether he’s upset or not. He _doesn’t_ have the right to treat you like shit—and whether that’s knocking you around or shouting at you over the phone, he doesn’t get to do that anymore.”

“I didn’t think he’d bring that up when he called, okay? It’s not like I’m laying down on the altar to take more abuse from him. I knew he was going to be upset, I just didn’t—I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have answered. I should have known better.”

“Jehan, I’m not trying to blame any of this on you,” Grantaire says. “And you’re still not responsible for this, okay? You answered the phone, yeah, but he’s the one who acted like a little shit, not you. You’re allowed to answer your damn phone. You’re allowed to handle this however you want. But Courfeyrac and me and all our friends—we don’t like seeing you get hurt, okay? It’s something I’d give anything not see happen anymore.”

Jehan fiddles with the tea bag in his mug, but he nods nonetheless.

“Why did you answer in the phone?” Courfeyrac asks after a lull in the conversation. “Not that you’re not allowed or whatever, but I thought you were just ignoring his calls.”

“I was,” Jehan says. “But then he called tonight, and—I don’t know—I was feeling okay today. I was feeling good about things, and so I thought maybe and I could talk and get some closure or something and then maybe he’d stop calling all the time or something.”

Courfeyrac refuses to believe even for a second that Montparnasse would give up so easily.

 Clearly, Grantaire thinks so too, because he’s looking at Jehan like he just sprouted antlers. “You really thought a single conversation would get him to stop calling you?”

Jehan gives him a look. “He’s a lot more reasonable than you think, okay?”

“Doubtful,” Grantaire says.

“I walked out on him. I didn’t even leave a note to say what was going on. I thought we could both benefit from some closure.”

“Do you feel like you’ve gotten that closure?”

“No,” Jehan says. Then he groans and moves his tea out of the way so he can rest his forehead on the table. “I just want this all to be over with. I’m sick of him calling me all the time, I’m sick of feeling like I have to explain myself to him, I’m sick of not feeling _normal_.”

Grantaire’s lips twitch. “Sorry to break it to you, Jehan, but you have _never_ been normal.”

“And we probably wouldn’t like you as much if you were,” Courfeyrac adds.

“Thanks,” Jehan says softly.

Grantaire hesitates for a second, then asks, “Are you sure he didn’t threaten you? I just want to make sure that you two are safe here.”

Jehan sits up. “He was no more threatening than usual.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Courfeyrac asked.

“Mont’s always talked big,” Jehan says. “He said a bunch of shit about watching my back—but that doesn’t mean anything coming from him. If he’d gotten into the specifics—I’m gonna fuck you up, I’m gonna make you bleed, shit like that—then we would need to be worried. I’ve heard him threaten people before over drug money. I know when he means it and when he doesn’t. All of his calling and messaging is annoying, but I really don’t think we need to be worried.”

Slowly, Grantaire nods. Then he checks the time on his phone and grimaces. “I need to get going,” he says. “I’m working the opening shift at work tomorrow.” He looks directly at Jehan as he stands up. “You take care of yourself, okay? You don’t owe Parnasse anything—not an explanation and certainly not apology—so don’t bully yourself into talking to him. Be nice to yourself.”

“Yes, mother,” Jehan says with a hint of his usual humor.

“I’ll see you out,” Courfeyrac says, wanting a quick word in private with Grantaire.

Grantaire nods and Courfeyrac follows him out of the apartment.

“Thanks for coming over so fast,” he says. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “I’d do anything for Jehan, but he’s a stubborn ass when he wants to be. People just usually don’t expect it because he looks so delicate. But he wanted to talk to Parnasse, so he was going to talk to Parnasse—consequences be damned. You’ve been great for Jehan through all of this—and you’ve helped him far more than I’ve been able to. Don’t second guess that just because he does stupid, stubborn things sometimes.”

Courfeyrac nods. “Still,” he says. “Thanks.”

“One more thing, though,” Grantaire says. “I know Jehan doesn’t seem worried about Parnasse’s phone calls or his threats or anything, but seriously, be on your guard. Jehan sees the best in people and I think that means he sees a very different version of Montparnasse than the rest of us do. There’s very little I would say he’s unwilling to do, so just be careful—and be vigilant. If you see anything suspicious, don’t hesitate to call me. Fuck, don’t hesitate to call the police. I don’t want to see Jehan get hurt again—and I don’t want you getting hurt either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all :) Happy Tuesday and all that. Thank you so much to those of you who took the time to read and kudos and comment over the holiday weekend. You're the best. Every last one of you.
> 
> In other news, I'm going out of town for about the next ten days, so I don't think I'll be able to post a Friday chapter this week. Hopefully, though, my mini vacation will allow me the time to catch up on some of my writing so that I'll be ready for Friday chapters for the next couple of weeks. (Am I being obnoxiously cryptic if I say that after chapter fifty-nine, you guys will really really want a quick update? Probably. But I'm slightly evil like that.)
> 
> Anyway, next chapter will up on Tuesday. Until then, feel free to come say hello on [tumblr](kingesstropolis.tumblr.com) :)


	59. Chapter Fifty-Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan decides that the first Saturday of February is a good day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence, attempted sexual assault, and some really effed up dialogue (the sort of dialogue that, after writing it, I was horrified to realize that had come out of my brain). Be cautious, my friends.

Jehan decides that the first Saturday of February is a good day. He likes keeping tracking of the good days since he broke up with Mont. He hopes that if he keeps track enough, he’ll see the number of good days increase and the number of bad days decrease and maybe one day he won’t have any more bad days. (Okay, he knows that’s a foolish thought because he’s  _always_ had bad days—even before Mont—but maybe one day he’ll stop having Mont-related bad days. That’s something to look forward to.)

It’s been days since his disastrous phone conversation with Mont and today is the first day that he feels like he’s back on solid ground. He spent the morning on the couch, half-heartedly catching up on reading assignments, while Courfeyrac watched classic movies for a film class he was taking. (Courfeyrac was an international relations and Jehan asked him why he was taking a film class. “This my last semester of my undergrad,” Courfeyrac had responded, “and I am determined to enjoy myself before I sell my soul to law school.”) They meet up with Marius and Cosette for lunch at the Musain and Jehan finds it nearly impossible to be at all melancholy around them.

His good mood isn’t dampened when they all get a text from Enjolras, calling for an emergency meeting at the Musain for those who can make it. Courfeyrac and Marius commandeer a couple of tables and shove them together in anticipation of everyone else’s arrival. Within minutes of Enjolras group text, Feuilly and Eponine respond that they’re at work and won’t be able to make it. Combeferre, surprisingly, also bows out of the meeting with a rather incoherent message about open labs and practical organic chemistry tests that take hours to complete. His message is quickly followed by a message from Joly, which simply reads “Ditto.”

“I hope it’s nothing too important,” Courfeyrac says as Bahorel collapses into a seat at their table-island.

“He’s got to know that half of us wouldn’t be able to make it,” Bahorel said. “It’s a Saturday. He should know better than to have meetings on Saturdays.”

Courfeyrac shook his head. “I told him he’s not allowed to have meetings on Friday and Saturday nights—he seemed to think that since most of us were hanging out together then anyway that it’d be a good time for a meeting—but he still thinks Saturday afternoons are fair game.”

“Better than Saturday mornings,” Marius points out.

Bossuet and Musichetta show up together, holding hands.

“Enjolras isn’t here yet?” Bossuet asks.

“Grantaire says they’re on their way,” Jehan says, looking up from the text he just got from Grantaire.

Musichetta smiles as she sits down. “Good, that means we’re not late.”

Enjolras and Grantaire are the last to arrive, showing up together a few minutes after Bossuet and Musichetta. Jehan’s facing the door to the café, so he sees Grantaire smile at Enjolras and open the door for him, which makes Enjolras blush, of all things. Interesting.

He wonders how long the blushing has been going on and why Grantaire hasn’t mentioned it.

Enjolras and Grantaire barely sit down at the table before Enjolras cuts to the chase.

 “I can’t stay long,” he says. “I’ve got a test I need to study for and take by tonight, so this will be quick.” He glances around the table and frowns as though just noticing that their numbers are small. “Which is just as well, since half of everyone is gone—but I thought you should all know that Grantaire got word that there was another attack on a sex worker.”

“Is she okay?” Jehan asks.

Enjolras looks to Grantaire to answer the question.

“She’s alive,” Grantaire says, as though to suggest that that might be all she has to be grateful for. “But she’s been…I guess mutilated is the best word for it. Sandra—the woman that I know—she didn’t have a lot of details. But the girl that was attacked is in bad shape and she’s probably going to need some reconstructive surgery.”

“Shit,” Bahorel says. “Just when you think these fuckers can’t get any worse.”

“We were thinking—well, Grantaire was thinking, this was his idea,” Enjolras says and at the mention of Grantaire’s name, he blushes again, “that maybe we could try to raise funds to help with medical expenses. Sandra and some of the others started a website to take donations after the last attack, just before the awareness run, but I was thinking we could help spread the word about it. I’m going to talk to my parents about maybe making a donation, and I’m sure Combeferre’s parents will help if he explains the situation…”His voice trails off and he looks towards Courfeyrac and Jehan, whose families are probably the most well-off of anyone else at the table.

“I was going to call my mom later tonight,” Courfeyrac said. “I’ll talk to her about donating then.”

Jehan winces a little. “I don’t…I don’t mean to sound callous, but there’s no way my dad would ever agree to donate money to something like this,” he says. He’s having a hard enough time convincing his dad to help him cover his living expenses and he knows his father well enough to know that the man will think every one of these sex workers got what was coming to her.

“Well, your dad’s an ass,” Grantaire says frankly. “I think he’d rather burn his money than give it to someone in need.”

Jehan doesn’t deny it.

“I’ll talk to Papa about this,” Cosette says. Jehan notices how tightly she’s holding Marius’s hand and remembers Grantaire mentioning off-handedly once that Cosette’s mother had worked with his own. He thinks—he can’t be sure because this was more than a year ago that he heard this and he thinks it’d be rude to ask—that her mother may have died from an STI before she was adopted by her papa and he can see why she’d be sensitive about this whole matter. “I’m sure he’ll be willing to help with some of these medical expenses.”

Cosette excuses herself to call her father and Marius follows. The rest of them brainstorm for a while other ways to spread the word about the website so other people can make donations before Enjolras notices the time and excuses himself to go study for his test.

Bahorel slumps back in his chair once Enjolras is gone. “Well, that was depressing,” he says. “I think I need a drink. The rest of you want something to drink?”

They offer up drink orders for Bahorel as well as bills and pocket change to help cover the cost of the drinks. Grantaire goes with him to help take care of the orders and to inspect what desserts the Musain has to offer today.

“In the way of happier things,” Jehan says, keeping his voice low so Grantaire doesn’t hear him.  “How long as Enjolras been blushing every time R opens his mouth?”

Courfeyrac smirks. “Noticed that too, did you?”

Bossuet shakes his head. “Joly and I have been talking—”

“You and Joly talk?” Courfeyrac asks with fake incredulity. “What? You two have time for talking between all the making out and sex the two of you get up to?”

“Three of us,” Musichetta corrects with a smile. “But they do talk. They use actual words. It’s quite impressive.”

“As I was _saying_ ,” Bossuet says, “Joly and I are going to lock them in a closet and not let them out until they work out whatever nonsense is going on.”

“They might actually kill each other if you lock them in somewhere,” Courfeyrac says. “As far as Enjolras is concerned, he does not have a crush and nothing I can say can convince him otherwise. Has Grantaire said anything?” he asks, turning to Jehan.

Jehan shakes his head. “Hasn’t said a word, and considering the way he watches Enjolras, he has to have noticed by now.”

Bahorel and Grantaire return with a tray of cups just in time to hear the end of Jehan’s sentence. “Who’s noticed what?” Grantaire asks.

“Courfeyrac’s noticed that living with someone who has long hair just means that you find hair all over the apartment now,” he says smoothly.

“He sheds like a dog,” Courfeyrac says, grinning. “I could probably make a wig with all the hair I’ve found.”

“Oooh, oooh,” Bossuet says. “Make a wig and give it to me!”

Jehan laughs so hard his stomach hurts. When he feels his phone buzzing in his pocket, he forces himself to calm down in case it’s one of his parents. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and groans when he sees Mont’s name on the caller ID. He hits the ignore button and sets his phone on the table.

“Parnasse?” Grantaire asks, watching him closely.

When he nods, Bahorel huffs.

“You should have let me answer it instead of hanging up on him,” Bahorel says. “I’ve been wanting to give that bastard a piece of my mind.”

“It’s better to ignore those calls,” Jehan says grim faced. “And I believe we were talking about making Bossuet a wig?” he adds, hoping to steer the conversation back to safer ground. He doesn’t want to talk about Mont. He doesn’t even want to think about him—especially when he’s been having such a good day.

Musichetta manages to wrap her arms around Bossuet’s head and pulls him against her breasts. “None of him are giving him a wig,” she says firmly. “I love his bald head just the way it is.”

“Besides,” Bossuet adds, “I don’t think Joly could handle having more hair clog up the bathroom drain.”

They chat amiably well into the evening, swapping stories and trading jokes and generally having a good time. Mont calls him four more times, and each time, Jehan ignores the calls despite Bahorel’s insistence that he _really_ wants to talk to Montparnasse. It’s well after sunset when Bossuet and Musichetta excuse themselves to go pick Joly up from campus.

“He had an O-Chem midterm,” Musichetta says, wincing with sympathy as Bossuet helps her into her coat. “Poor thing is going to need a little TLC tonight.”

Bossuet’s grin leaves no question about what that TLC is going to involve.

Not long after they leave, Jehan remembers a paper he has due on Monday—only four pages, double spaced. Not the biggest assignment, but his school work was pretty spotty all throughout January and he knows he needs to exert more effort now that his life is a little more stable.

“I should get going too,” he says when the conversation lulls. “I’ve got a paper to write.”

Courfeyrac sighs. “Why must you remind me of my responsibilities?” he asks. “I’ve got a stupid oral presentation to work on.”

“Combeferre and Enjolras aren’t here to keep you on task,” Jehan says with a smile. “Someone has to do it.”

“You’re a cruel man, Prouvaire,” he says.

Bahorel and Grantaire briefly entertain the idea of leaving as well before mutually deciding that their time is better spent without their noses tucked in books.

“I know Bahorel’s determined to be an eternal student,” Courfeyrac says when they’ve left the café, “but isn’t Grantaire graduating this spring with me and Enjolras and Combeferre? Surely he has some sort of capstone project or something he needs to be worried about.”

Jehan shakes his head. “He took a semester off his sophomore year,” he says. “So he’s actually a semester behind you guys—and even then, he’s not really in a rush to graduate. Not many job prospects for an art history major, you know?”

Courfeyrac snorts. “There’s no job prospects for any of us.”

Courfeyrac’s apartment is only a few blocks down from the Musain and when they’re a block away from Courf’s apartment, Jehan spots a man—tall, thin, something like a bat or a crowbar in his hands—lingering at the corner. His stomach feels like ice because it only takes him a fraction of a second to recognize Babet. He fumbles for Courfeyrac’s hand and tugs him backwards.

“We need to go,” he says.

He’s beginning to think that maybe he shouldn’t have ignored all of Mont’s phone calls earlier in the evening.

“What?”

Jehan nods his head towards Babet. “One of Mont’s friends.” He tugs harder at Courf’s hand, his heart pounding in his chest. “C’mon, Courf, we need to go _now._ ”

“Right,” Courf says. “There’s a pharmacy just around the corner. We can wait there till he clears off.” When they turn, Courfeyrac wraps his arm around Jehan’s shoulders, and Jehan is grateful beyond words for the contact because he thinks he might be shaking.

If Mont is here… well, he can’t even handle talking to Mont on the phone right now—he knows he’s going to fall apart if he has to actually see him. And that bat or that crowbar or whatever it was that Babet was carrying—it doesn’t take a genius to realize that this isn’t going to be a pleasant chat.

They don’t make it more than a handful of steps towards the corner before Gueulemer comes around the corner. Jehan freezes. Courfeyrac, recognizing Gueulemer, tries to steer him across the street.

Claquesous waits for them across the street.

Jehan can feel his chest tighten and his lungs cease to work properly. He’s not ready for this.

For all his bulk, Gueulemer moves fast and Jehan’s really not sure how it happens because all he can think is _not Courf, please not Courf_ but Gueulemer is practically on top of them and he shoves Courfeyrac to the ground before wrapping a meaty hand around Jehan’s neck and slamming him against the wall at the mouth of the thin alley that was at their back. Courfeyrac struggles to his feet and tries to tackle Gueulemer but he’s intercepted by Claquesous and Babet.

Babet swings his bat into Courfeyrac’s gut and Jehan’s fingers grasp and pinch and pull at Gueulemer’s hand around his neck but he can’t find any purchase but he needs to get away, he needs to get to Courfeyrac who’s making an unholy racket, despite the fact that Claquesous has his hand tangled in Courfeyrac’s hair to try to keep him down.

“Take care of him,” Gueulemer grunts. He pulls Jehan away from the wall and slams him back hard enough for his vision to go black.

When he can see again, he can’t see Courfeyrac anymore.

Gueulemer’s hand tightens around his neck.

“Don’t don’t please don’t.” Jehan barely has air to breathe and his words come out as little more than a hoarse gasp but Gueulemer can clearly hear him.

He leers at Jehan. “I always knew I’d have you begging for me one day.”

His heart pounds and his lungs beg for more air and spots dance across his field of vision. He tries to look over Gueulemer’s shoulder, tries to hear what they’ve done to Courfeyrac. He can still hear Courfeyrac struggle, though it sounds like he’s a million miles away and why can no one else hear him? Surely someone somewhere around here must hear him. He’s so loud.

A sharp cry and Courfeyrac goes silent.

“No no no no.”

Gueulemer tightens his grip, cutting of Jehan’s air completely. “Now that your noisy little friend is out of the way, we have time to play.”

He claws at Gueulemer’s skin, trying to cause pain, trying to draw blood. Mont taught him how to defend himself when they started dating, told Jehan that it was dangerous to be in a relationship with him and that he’d make sure Jehan knew how to protect himself. He tries to brace himself against the wall behind him, tries to find enough leverage so he can lift his feet and slam them into Gueulemer’s gut, his balls, his knee, anything to make him let go, anything to allow him to get away, to find Courf, to call for help.

But before he can do anything, Gueulemer pulls him away from the wall before slamming him back into it again. All the remaining air is forced from his lungs and when his head collides with brick all he can see is black.

When his vision clears this time, it comes back slowly, like a camera lens being brought back into focus. Head pounding, lungs begging for air, chest tight, and pressure. So much pressure across his chest.

Gueulemer leaning over him. His face comes into focus and Jehan tries to turn away but he can’t.

Gueulemer’s sitting across his chest.

Gueulemer’s talking.

“…if you’d just gone back to Parnasse, none of this would have happened,” he says.

He’s got both of Jehan’s wrists in one hand, wrapping something—rope? Shoe laces? A belt? He doesn’t know—around them to keep them still. He doesn’t have the strength yet to struggle. Patience. Wait it out. You don’t have to be stronger than your opponent if you can wait for the right moment.

“That’s why he called, you know,” Gueulemer says. “Wanted to give you one last chance to crawl back to him. You could have saved your little friend if you’d just gone back to Parnasse.”

_Saved your little…?_ No. Not Courfeyrac. They couldn’t—they didn’t—

“If you hadn’t been such a slut and whored yourself out to your little faggot friend for shelter, none of this would have happened. But no—you had to get stupid and you ran away from Parnasse and now he’s a moody bastard because his little fuck-toy ran off. It’s time you remember your place, you fucking cocksucker.”

Jehan can’t be sure—he can’t be sure of anything at this point, all he knows is that Gueulemer is sitting on his chest and that Courfeyrac might…he might be…no, he can’t—but Jehan thinks he hears sirens coming from the street.

Gueulemer turns just enough—maybe because of the phantom sirens? Jehan doesn’t know and he doesn’t care because Gueulemer turns just enough that Jehan sees an opportunity and he slams his bound hands against the side of his face.

And accomplishes nothing more than pissing Gueulemer off. He catches Jehan’s hands in an iron grip and punches him once, twice, three times to the face.

He blacks out again, but he can still hear, still feel. Blood on his face and three fingers shoved so deep into his mouth he chokes.

“If you don’t want me going in dry, you’ll slick em up good, you little bitch. It’s all the prep you’re going to get before I rape your ass and then I’m gonna hold you down while Babet fucks your pretty little mouth and Sous shoves his fat cock up your ass.”

Jehan tries to bite down on Gueulemer’s fingers, but Gueulemer’s free hand puts pressure on his jaw, keeping his mouth open. He shoves his fingers deeper and tears well in Jehan’s eyes.

“And then you’ll fuck yourself on that bat Babet brought for us. Put on a nice little porno for us. It’s already covered in your little whore friend’s blood, maybe even some brain matter by now, so it’ll be nice and slick for you when you shove it up your used little hole and you’ll fuck yourself on it like a good little bitch and once you’re fucked out completely, we’ll drag your worthless ass back to Montparnasse—and then the real fun’ll start.”

Jehan is sobbing in earnest now, which makes it hard to breathe and he thinks that maybe it’d be easier for him to die here in this alley before Gueulemer can make due on his threats and there’s nothing he can do, not with Gueulemer’s fingers in his mouth and not with Gueulemer sitting on his chest and with Courfeyrac—not with Courfeyrac dead or dying or worse—and that makes him sob harder and he’s not really aware of his body anymore when he hears gun shots.

The sound is loud and impossibly close and before Jehan can process what’s happened, the pressure on his chest is gone, as are the fingers in his mouth and all he can do is sob on the ground as a police officer rushes to his aid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Er...hi. I hope you're not too traumatized. Thanks so much to everyone who commented or kudos'd. You're all lovely.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Friday.
> 
> PS: some of you may have noticed that Requited is now the second part of a series (ooooer). I wrote a one shot last night to help me cope with the very recent death of my kitty and it fit with this verse so here it is. It's shamelessly self-indulgent and I wrote it while crying so it's probably not that good, but there you have it.


	60. Chapter Sixty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras is in the middle of his test when his phone starts going off

Enjolras is in the middle of his Constitutional Rights and Immunities test when his phone goes off. It’s on vibrate, thankfully, and he feels it buzzing against his leg, but he ignores the call and focuses on the essay he’s supposed to be writing. One call is an anomaly. Nothing to worry over. One call is Combeferre calling to ask him to pick up some milk on his way home. One call is Joly warning about a new strain of the flu that’s going around campus. One call is Grantaire calling to leave a voicemail about something he saw or heard or did that he knew would get Enjolras’s blood boiling.

But when one call is followed up by two more and at least a half-dozen messages in the space of about fifteen minutes, he knows something is wrong. He abandons his essay question, leaving a quick “Sorry, family emergency” note on the bottom margin. As soon as his test is handed in, he pulls out his phone.

Two missed calls from Grantaire. One from Combeferre.

One voicemail from Grantaire. Five texts from Combeferre, including two of which are group message.

He checks the group message first.

_**Combeferre:** Courfeyrac and Jehan were attacked and have been taken to St. Mercy’s hospital. Grantaire, Eponine, and I are on our way there now. I’ll send more details when I can._

His stomach plummets. Next message.

_**Combeferre:** At hospital. Don’t know what happened yet, but we don’t think it’s life threatening._

Enjolras rushes across campus to the nearest street and flags down the first cab that he sees. He’s grateful beyond words that it stops for him. As the taxi takes him to the hospital, Enjolras checks the rest of his private messages from Combeferre.

_**Combeferre:** I know you’re in that test, but come to the hospital as soon as you’re done. We need you here. I need you here._

_**Combeferre:** Do you know Courfeyrac’s parents’ numbers? His sister called Marius and apparently no one can get a hold of his parents_

_**Combeferre:** Never mind. Marius has their numbers. Come as soon as you can. We’re in the ER lobby._

He rubs a hand over his face, feeling sick. It’s Saturday night and traffic is miserable through this part of the city on weekends and he wants to bark at the cab driver to go faster, but he knows that won’t change anything. It’s going to be at least a half hour before he gets to the hospital.

He checks his voicemail from Grantaire. According to the time stamp, this call was the first one he got.

Grantaire’s voice is practically frantic in the message. “Dammit, Apollo, I need you to pick up your fucking phone. I can’t—shit. You’re in that test. I’ll Combeferre. He can give me a ride to the hospital.”

Enjolras forces himself to take a deep breath. The group text from Combeferre said that he didn’t think the injuries were life threatening. Everything would be fine. He stares at his phone for a minute before dialing Combeferre’s number.

He doesn’t pick up.

Of course he doesn’t pick up. He’s probably busy.

Enjolras’s mind runs in sick circles.

What if something more had happened? What if Courfeyrac’s or Jehan’s injuries _were_ life-threatening and they were all gathered around to say their last goodbyes and Enjolras wasn’t there because he’s stuck in fucking traffic?

He slams his hand down against the seat next to him and forces himself to take a deep breath. Panicking isn’t going to solve anything. Ferre said the injuries weren’t life threatening and he needs to trust that until he gets to the hospital. And he needs to be strong and composed when he gets there. He doesn’t necessarily like thinking of himself as the “leader” of his friends, but he knows that the others tend to look at him during rough times like this. He can’t fall apart. He can’t. He knows Grantaire is probably a mess over worrying for Jehan and Combeferre will be trying to be calm and composed, but he and Courfeyrac have always been so close. He’s got to be as worried as Enjolras is.

By the time the taxi finally gets to the hospital, Enjolras thrusts a handful of cash at the driver, knowing he’s overpaying by at least twenty bucks, but he doesn’t want to worry about dealing with a credit card right now. When he rushes into the ER lobby, he’s unsurprised to find many of his friends already there. Musichetta and Joly are sitting in the corner with Eponine’s siblings and an array of hospital coffee cups. Combeferre is talking to someone at the nurses’ station with Eponine, and Marius is standing a few feet away, talking on his cell phone. Cosette is with him, rubbing his back.

Eponine is the first to spot Enjolras, and she touches Combeferre’s arm, directing his attention towards Enjolras. Combeferre excuses himself from his conversation and he’s at Enjolras’s side in an instant, gathering him up into a hug.

Enjolras has never been very physically demonstrative, and Combeferre, who’s known him since pre-school, knows that. It’s a testament to how shaken up Combeferre is that this was his first instinct. Enjolras wraps his arms around Combeferre in return, trying to be comforting.

“What the hell happened?” he asks when Combeferre pulls away. “What’s going on? Where’s Grantaire?”

“You just missed Grantaire,” Combeferre says. “Apparently, he’s Jehan’s medical proxy and they needed him for something—I don’t know. We’re not family, so they’re not telling us much.”

“Do we know what happened?” Enjolras asks. He wishes Courfeyrac were here. _Here_ here, with them in the lobby and not in some hospital room somewhere, because he knows it would take Courfeyrac all of about five seconds to charm one of the nurses into telling them everything they need to know.

Combeferre shrugs helplessly. “Courf’s sister is here, and she’s relayed some information to Marius, but it’s not much. We know they were attacked, about a block away from Courfeyrac’s place. I guess someone who lives nearby heard a commotion and called the police. They haven’t caught the guys—they ran off when the police showed up. Grantaire was still at the Musain when he got the call from the hospital, and it wasn’t long after that Marius got a call from Courf’s sister.”

Enjolras drags his hand through his hair. “Are they okay?”

“All we’ve been able to get so far is that it’s not life-threatening,” Combeferre says. “Cassandra is either with Courfeyrac or his doctor now, we’re not sure, but she texted Marius to let us know that he’s stable. And when the nurse came to fetch Grantaire for Jehan—from the sound of it, Jehan’s awake but it sounded like he was panicking and they wanted Grantaire’s help. I really don’t know. There’s a chance that the police might be trying to talk to him now.”

Enjolras scans the lobby again, taking note of who’s there and who isn’t. “What about Feuilly and Bahorel and Bossuet? Where are they?”

“Feuilly’s still at work. He promised he’d come by as soon as he could. Bahorel and Bossuet went back to Courf’s place to grab a change of clothes for him and Jehan. We think they’re going to be here over night.”

“Do we know who did this?” Enjolras asks. “Were they just mugged or was it…?”

Combeferre glances over his shoulder toward Eponine. “She’s convinced it’s Montparnasse and his gang. She’s worried. It’s why we brought Gavroche and Azelma with us. But they could have just been mugged…or it could have been some sort of hate crime. You know how Courf is—he holds hands with everyone whenever the urge strikes him and it’s not as though Jehan exactly passes as straight.” Combeferre adjusts his glasses, even though they were already sitting perfectly on the bridge of his nose. Enjolras recognizes it as an old nervous tick.

He reaches out to clasp Combeferre’s arm. “Thank you for getting here so quickly,” he says. “I know Courfeyrac will feel better knowing that he’s got the whole lot of us here to fret over him.”

Combeferre nods. “It’s just nerve-wracking, you know? I’m not meant to be on this side of the equation—I want to be back there _helping_ them.”

“I know,” Enjolras says. “Even still, you’re far better at this waiting thing than I am. Let’s go sit with the others?”

Combeferre nods and Enjolras steers him towards the hard plastic seats near Joly and Chetta and Gavroche and Azelma. Joly passes Enjolras a coffee cup when he sits down.

“Made it just the way you like it,” Joly says.

Next to him, Musichetta offers a wane smile. “Still tastes like shit, though,” she says. “Don’t know why they can’t get good coffee here.”

Eponine takes a seat between Combeferre and Gavroche, slinging an arm over Gavroche’s shoulder and tugging him close even though he acts indignant and tries to shove her away.

And then they wait.

And wait.

When Marius finally gets off the phone, he and Cosette come to join the others. His face is pale, making his freckles stand out in stark relief across his face. “I finally got a hold of Courf’s parents,” he said. “They’re here in the city—they were seeing a show and had their phones off. His mom wanted to check her messages during intermission and I managed to call at just the right time, I guess. They’re on their way over now.”

“From that part of the city?” Eponine says. “It’s going to be nearly an hour before they get over here.”

Marius shrugs helplessly.

About ten minutes later, Bahorel and Bossuet show up with an overnight bag for each Jehan and Courfeyrac. Bahorel looks livid.

“Are the cops still here?” he asks, dropping his bag onto a seat instead of sitting down.

“I haven’t seen them leave yet,” Cosette says.

“Someone broke into Courf’s apartment,” Bahorel says. “The place is ransacked.”

“Shit,” Eponine says.

Bossuet nods, squeezing into the space that Joly and Musichetta make for him. “His TV is missing, and I couldn’t find his laptop, either, but the place was such a mess that it’s possible we just missed it.”

“You should call the police now,” Enjolras says. “To report the break in. They’ll probably assign the case to whoever’s here right now. If we wait to report it, it’ll just cause problems.”

Bahorel nods and fishes his phone out of his pocket. He steps outside to make his call.

“I’m going to fucking kill Montparnasse,” Eponine mutters under her breath.

No one says anything to deny Montparnasse’s involvement in this. Combeferre reaches over to rub her back.

Then they wait some more.

And wait.

And wait.

Enjolras is about to go over to the nurses’ station to see if he can coax information out of anyone when Courfeyrac’s sister, Cassandra, shows up. She, like Marius, is exceptionally pale and she looks like she’s in over her head. Her worried expression softens just a little when she sees Enjolras and the others. Marius promptly stands up to offer her his seat.

“Were you able to get a hold of my parents?” she asked, collapsing into the seat.

Marius nodded. “They were at a show. They’re on their way here now.”

“That’s going to take forever,” she says, rubbing her hand over his face.

“Is that a problem?” Enjolras asks. “Is Courfeyrac okay?”

“Yes and no,” she says. “He’s okay. I mean, he’s not. He’s in the fucking hospital, but his life’s not in danger or anything. He’s beat up pretty bad—covered in these awful, awful bruises—but the doctors aren’t worried about that.”

“What are they worried about?” Combeferre asks.

“His knee is broken,” Cassandra says. She speaks as though she’s parroting back the doctor’s words. “His knee cap is shattered—blunt force trauma, they said—and they’re definitely going to need to operate on it. It’s just a matter of operating now or later.”

“Why would they wait till later?” Bossuet asks, looking to Joly for the answer. “Wouldn’t that make it worse?”

“With injuries like this, they often like to wait a few days for the swelling to go down,” Joly says. “It makes the surgery easier.”

“Are they worried about nerve damage?” Combeferre asks. “That’s the only reason why they’d operate now.”

Cassandra nods. “Courfeyrac is still unconscious, so he can’t make the call himself, but since operating when the knee is still swollen is dangerous and I guess it could make things worse, they want someone to sign off on it before they do the surgery—which means waiting for my parents to show up.”

“You should try giving them a call,” Marius suggests. “They’re probably just in a cab now. They probably want to know what’s going on.”

Cassandra nods and excuses herself.

“Someone should go tell Jehan and Grantaire,” Enjolras says. “They’ll want to know that Courfeyrac is okay—or going to be okay, I guess.”

“You should go,” Eponine says.

“Me?”

Combeferre nods. “Grantaire was pretty anxious for you to get here,” he says. “He’ll want to see you now.”

Unsure why Grantaire would be anxious for _him_ to get here, Enjolras nods and slips away from the group. Instead of asking one of the nurses which room Jehan is in—and risk being turned away because he’s not family—he just walks down the hall like he’s supposed to be there. He sees a couple of cops lingering at the end of the hallway and figures Jehan is somewhere back there. He surreptitiously peaks through the windows on the doors before he spots the back of Grantaire’s head and slips inside the room.

Grantaire is seated with his back to the door and he blocks Enjolras’s view of Jehan, lying on a hospital bed. Soft classical music plays from a phone on the table next to Jehan’s bed, and it mostly masks the steady beating of the heart monitor.

 “Grantaire?” Enjolras says quietly.

Grantaire turns to look at him, worry and exhaustion and anger all clear on his face, but his expression softens a little at the sight of Enjolras in the door way. He takes Grantaire’s slight smile as an invitation to come in.

“Is he asleep?” Enjolras asks. He steps up beside Grantaire and takes a good look at Jehan. There’s a bandage wrapped around his head and white tape across his nose. His face has already started to bruise and it looks like he might be sporting two black eyes for the next few weeks. The beginnings of a hand-shaped bruise are visible on Jehan’s neck and his wrists have red marks around them. Jehan fidgets occasionally in his sleep, but otherwise, he’s still.

“Maybe,” Grantaire says. “They dosed him with something once the cops were done with him. I’m not sure if he’s actually asleep or just really high at this point.”

“How’s he doing? Is he—is he okay?”

“Broken nose, bruised esophagus, mild concussion,” Grantaire says. “The doctor said it’s mostly just surface damaged—painful, but none of it is really life-threatening.”

“That’s good,” Enjolras says.

“What about Courfeyrac?” Grantaire asks. “No one would tell us what happened to him—not even if he’s alive or not. Jehan—the way he was talking—I think he thinks Courf is—”

“He’s alive,” Enjolras says hurriedly. “Very much alive. I came to let you both know how he’s doing. His knee is broken—his sister said that his knee cap was shattered—but other than that, I think he’s like Jehan. Mostly just surface damage.”

Grantaire sighs, his shoulders sagging a little in relief. “I didn’t know what I was going to tell him if Courf was…”

“He’s going to need surgery for his knee,” Enjolras says. “As soon as they can schedule him in the OR, I think, once his parents sign off on it, but otherwise it looks like Courfeyrac is going to be just fine.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “I’m going to kill the bastards who did this.”

Enjolras takes a seat at the foot of Jehan’s bed, so he can see both him and Grantaire. “You said the cops were in here. Did Jehan talk to them?  Did he say who did this?”

“He said he didn’t know who attacked them, that they were just mugged,” Grantaire says, frowning a little. “I know he’s lying though. This has Parnasse’s fucking gang written all over it.”

“I don’t understand,” Enjolras says. “Why would he lie about who did this to him?”

Grantaire nudges the edge of the hospital bed with his foot. “That’s exactly what I want to know,” he says, looking at Jehan as though hoping he’d wake up and answer. He looks back to Enjolras. “I know there are…complicated emotions for him,” he says. “He still has some feelings for Montparnasse and maybe he wants to protect him or maybe he’s worried about retribution. With the way he was panicking, I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter.”

“Did he have a panic attack?” Enjolras says, glancing back towards Jehan. The sedative is strong enough to keep him still and quiet, but Enjolras can remember the times that Jehan has shown up at Grantaire’s apartment on the verge of panic or beaten bloody.

Grantaire nods. “No thanks to the fucking cops,” he says. “One of the nurses told me that he was pretty distraught when they brought him in—and fuck, it’s not like I blame him, I’d be a mess too—but they had calmed him down a little by the time the police showed up to question him about what happened. Then the fucking little shits start making him panic because no one would tell him happened to Courf and the nurses wanted to sedate him before he hurt himself, but the cops wanted their answers _now_ , so one of the nurses fetched me to see if I could calm him down. I don’t know how useful I was. I spent most of the time trying not to punch the fucking cop.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Enjolras says. “It’s lucky you’re his medical proxy. I can’t imagine his parents would be remotely useful in that situation.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Funnily enough, it’s Parnasse’s doing,” Grantaire says. “Jehan’s still on his parents’ insurance plan, so they should have been notified about the attack, not me. But about two years ago, Jehan had a bad trip on ecstasy and Parnasse had to take him to the hospital—he was too dehydrated or something, I can’t remember—and he spent nearly two hours convincing the nurse that Jehan’s dad was an abusive drunk and would only hurt Jehan worse if they called him. The nurse ended up giving him a number for the insurance company and once Parnasse was done with them, I was listed as Jehan’s next of kin.”

“Never thought I’d be grateful to that monster,” Enjolras mutters. “Did the doctor say when Jehan could go home?”

“They’ll release him in the morning,” Grantaire says. “They probably could have released him tonight, but he was panicking so bad he could barely breathe. They wanted to keep him here for observation. But he can’t go home in the morning—he’s got nowhere to go.”

“Shit,” Enjolras mutters. He hadn’t thought of that. “You’re right though. Bahorel and Bossuet stopped by Courf’s place to get a change of clothes for them and the place was ransacked. We can’t let either of them go back, especially not if Montparnasse was behind this.”

“Guess Jehan’ll be sleeping on my couch tomorrow night,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras shakes his head. “Ferre and I have a spare room. He can come stay with us for as long as he needs it.”

Grantaire looks startled at the sudden offer, as though he’s unfamiliar with this sort of generosity. “What about Courf?” he says. “He’s going to need a place to stay, too.”

“It’s probably going to be a few days before he’s released,” Enjolras says. “We’ll worry about it then.”

* * *

 

Courfeyrac is scheduled for surgery early on Sunday morning. While he’s on the operating table,  Jehan is released from the hospital and he goes with something tantamount to an armed guard back to Courfeyrac’s apartment to get his things before being escorted back to Enjolras’s and Combeferre’s apartment. If he feels at all uncomfortable with their hovering behavior, he says nothing.

If anything, Enjolras thinks Jehan is a little too quiet, a little too accommodating. He asks timid questions about Courfeyrac and whether or not he’s okay, but beyond that, he’s practically mute. Grantaire watches Jehan all morning with a careful expression while Eponine scowls at any of their friends who look like they want to ask Jehan about what happened last night. They set him up in Combeferre’s room because their spare room only has a pull-out couch for a bed and no one thinks that’s a decent enough sleep surface given Jehan’s injuries. Around eleven in the morning, they get word (via Marius, via Cassandra) that Courfeyrac is out of surgery and that the doctor says everything went well.

Enjolras feels relieved of tension he wasn’t aware of having at the news.

In the evening, he and Combeferre go back to the hospital to see Courfeyrac. Cassandra had texted Enjolras to let him know that Courfeyrac had been moved out of the recovery room and into a private room. His parents are waiting at his bedside when they show up, looking as though they haven’t slept all night.

“He woke up a little after the surgery,” his father says. “Just long enough to ask if your friend Jehan was okay before the drugs kicked in again.”

Combeferre suggests that maybe they’d like to step out for a little bit, maybe go get a nice dinner together and he promises that he and Enjolras will stay in the room with Courfeyrac in case he wakes up. With Courfeyrac’s parents gone, Enjolras settles into a chair by the window of Courfeyrac’s hospital room and Combeferre steps out to get them both some coffee. They don’t know how long they’ll be here.

Courfeyrac’s hospital room is quiet. Some beeping and humming from machines and monitors, but it’s all background noise. Enjolras can ignore it easily. The stillness in the room is comforting—the last twenty-four hours have been tumultuous and this feels like the first time that he’s really had time to sit down and process everything—but it’s also unnerving. It’s strange to be in the same room as Courfeyrac when he’s so still and so quiet and hooked up to machines that beep to remind everyone that he’s still alive. Courfeyrac has never been one for silence or stillness or meditation, and it feels very very wrong for him to be that way now.

Courfeyrac’s face is barely bruised—not like Jehan’s is, at least—and it looks like he could be sleeping if it weren’t for his right leg held up in a sling. And the breathing tubes. And the IV drip.

Combeferre comes back a few minutes later with two cups of coffee. It tastes as bad now as it did last night. For a moment, they sit in silence. Enjolras has often felt that his relationship with Combeferre and Courfeyrac transcends words and sitting in silence isn’t unusual for them. It normally doesn’t feel this somber though, either. Courfeyrac normally doesn’t let things get this somber.

“He’ll be okay,” Combeferre says, as though knowing that Enjolras’s thoughts were straying to Courfeyrac.

“I still can’t believe any of this happened,” Enjolras says. “I knew Montparnasse was a threat, but Jehan didn’t seem all that worried. This came out of nowhere.”

Combeferre nods. “We’ll help them both through it,” he says. “We’re _les amis_. It’s what we do.”

Enjolras takes a deep breath, trying to center himself. “And we can start by finding a place for Courfeyrac to stay once he’s released.” He’s been trying to puzzle together the housing arrangements for his friends since Grantaire brought it up last night.

“Does Marius have extra space?” Combeferre asks. “I know he’s in the same complex as Eponine and Grantaire, but he’s only got a one room place, doesn’t he?”

“Not that that would stop Marius. Courf let him stay in his one-room for, what was it, three months? He wouldn’t hesitate to return the favor. But Courf can’t stay there. It’s not safe.”

“Not safe?”

“Montparnasse knows where Eponine and Grantaire live. I don’t want Jehan or Courfeyrac staying anywhere near there.”

“Well, we’ve got Jehan with us and I think between the two of us we can keep a decent check on things. What about Bahorel’s? He told me earlier that his spare room is available. Said he took his ad off Craigslist over winter break because he didn’t know if or when Jehan would be leaving Montparnasse and wanted to make sure he had a place to stay.”

“Bahorel’s place has too many stairs,” Enjolras says. “And Courf’s going to be on crutches for what, six weeks?”

“At least.” Combeferre adjusts his glasses, even though they weren’t in need of adjusting. “We really should wait till he’s awake to talk about any of this anyway. You know he’s not going to want to leave his place. He loves that apartment.”

“Yeah, no. That’s not going to happen. They know where he lives and they know he’s been helping Jehan. Hell, they probably even know that he has feelings for Jehan and I’m not going to put him at that kind of risk.”

“We could always play the ‘you’re hurt and you need someone to help you around the house for the first few weeks’ card to get him to stay with one of us.”

“That still leaves us the problem of finding a place for him, though.”

“Marius’s place is out. Grantaire and Eponine’s place would be out even if Montparnasse didn’t know where they live—they’ve got enough people crawling around that place. We’ve got a full house with Jehan—maybe he and Courfeyrac could share the spare room? Or we could share and let each of them have their own space? No, you’re right. I can tell by the look on your face that that’s an awful idea. Joly, Bossuet, and Chetta would take him in, but their place is too small for the three of them as it is. Bahorel’s place is out because of the stair issue and Feuilly—what about Feuilly’s place?”

Enjolras shakes his head. “His roommates are assholes. They’d throw a fit if Feuilly had someone stay more than a night. They nearly got Feuilly evicted when Bahorel crashed on their couch that one time because he was too drunk to get home. Not to mention, he’s too far from campus. We can’t make Courfeyrac walk that distance.”

Combeferre slumps back in his chair and drums his fingers on the armrest. “What if we moved Jehan over to Bahorel’s place and had Courfeyrac stay with us?”

“I don’t want Jehan to feel like we’re trying to get rid of him, and we still have the stair issue and the distance from campus. Courf’s not going to be able to drive anytime soon, right?”

“I don’t think Jehan’ll mind if we move him over to Bahorel’s. He only just moved his stuff into our place and we have an elevator in our building and—”

“We have an elevator?”

Combeferre rolls his eyes. “Yes, Enjolras, we have an elevator. You walk past it every day to get to the stairwell.”

“Oh.”

“And one of us can drive Courf to campus. Just because he can’t drive doesn’t mean we can’t.”

“I’ll text Grantaire, see if he’ll talk to Jehan about moving to Bahorel’s.”

Combeferre shakes his head. “Just ask Jehan. He seemed pretty reserved this morning, but I think there’s only so much he’ll take of the rest of us bossing him around. Let him feel like he’s involved in making decisions about his life.”

“Right,” Enjolras says, fishing out his phone. He sends a quick text to Jehan, explaining their housing dilemma and their proposed situation. He’s pocketing his phone when Courfeyrac moans from across the room.

At Courfeyrac’s first sign of life, Enjolras and Combeferre are both at his side in an instant. Combeferre’s bedside manner is infinitely superior to Enjolras’s, and Enjolras watches as Combeferre presses one hand against Courfeyrac’s—Courf’s hand curls around Combeferre’s fingers—and uses his other hand to gently brush Courfeyrac’s hair away from his face.

“Courf?” Enjolras asks quietly. He reaches out to touch Courfeyrac’s wrist. His touch is light because he can’t bear the thought of causing Courfeyrac more pain. “Can you hear me?”

He groans in response and Enjolras’s heart stutters. Courfeyrac responded to him.

“You’ve been sleeping all day,” Combeferre says. “We’ve been worried about you.”

Courfeyrac’s breath is labored, as though waking up is some herculean effort. After a minute or two, Courfeyrac manages to open his eyes.

“Enj?” he asks, his voice rough. “Ferre?”

Combeferre gives his hand a gentle squeeze. “We’re right here,” he says.

“It’s good to see you awake,” Enjolras says.

“Jehan?” he asks.

“Is doing fine,” Enjolras says. “He’s with the others right now. He probably would have come, but I think he needed a break from the hospital. He’s worried about you.”

Courfeyrac nods and tries to adjust in the bed, but he winces and lets out a pitiful whimper.

“Courfeyrac?” Combeferre says gently. “What’s your pain like right now? On a scale from one to ten.”

Courfeyrac screws his eyes shut. “Seventeen,” he says through clenched teeth.

“I’m going to go get a nurse,” Combeferre says, pulling away.

“No, don’t go,” Courfeyrac says, his hand twitching towards Combeferre.

Enjolras grabs it instead. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Courfeyrac’s grip on his hand is at once both weak and strong. Enjolras rubs his thumb against Courfeyrac’s skin and hopes it’s comforting. Part of him wants to demand answers from Courfeyrac about what happened and who attacked them, but mostly he just feels helpless in the face of his friend’s pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Friday chapter, just like I promised. Apologies if the ending seems a little abrupt--I wrestled with it for a bit and I think that this is the best I have to offer at the moment. Thanks so much to everyone who commented/kudos and especially thanks for the condolences about my dearly departed kitty. You really are wonderful people.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday :)


	61. Chapter Sixty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac gets released from the hospital

Courfeyrac spends three days after his surgery in the hospital. He’s rarely alone during the day. He’s not sure if his friends and his family have set up some sort of rotation to make sure he always has company, but during visiting hours, there’s always someone in his room—even when he’s asleep. He pretends that he doesn’t notice that Jehan is never among their company and really, there’s a million different explanations for why Jehan _doesn’t_ come to visit him—a busy schedule, not feeling up to the trip due to his own injuries, a distaste of hospitals—but he can’t help but wonder if Jehan somehow begrudges him for what happened. He certainly feels like he could have done more try to protect Jehan or to defend himself, and the guilt of that sits in his chest and it festers.

After his parents are reasonably well-assured that he’s okay and that he’s recovering, they start demanding answers from him. He’s honest with them and he explains about Jehan’s abusive ex and his cronies and how Jehan had been getting threatening messages for weeks now, and his parents want him to go to the police with information. And he does…sort of. Grantaire had told him that Jehan told the police he didn’t know who attacked them and Courfeyrac worries that Jehan has a reason for withholding that information—that maybe some threat was made that’s keeping him silent—and Courfeyrac isn’t sure he’s willing to divulge this information until he finds out why Jehan withheld it.

Instead, he gives the police a description of the two men who attacked him—relying more on his memory of seeing them at Grantaire’s birthday party months and months ago because there’s really not much he remembers from the attack. But other than that, he follows Jehan’s lead and he doesn’t give names.

He hopes he won’t end up regretting this.

During the day, his friends and his family do a decent job of keeping his mind off the pain. A further search of his ransacked apartment proved that his laptop was, in fact, stolen but his parents don’t hesitate to buy him a new one. And Enjolras contacts all of Courfeyrac’s professors to get his school assignments—which makes Courfeyrac groan and roll his eyes because surely being _hospitalized_ should mean that he doesn’t have to do his fucking homework.

But once visiting hours are done for the day, Courfeyrac is left alone.

And he hates it.

Whatever the nurses drug him up with does an okay job of numbing the pain from his leg, but when it starts to wear off, it feels like his knee is on fire and he has such a low tolerance for pain that it nearly drives him to tears. Two of the night nurses take pity on him and visit him more often than they should and they stay with him longer than is prudent, and he really can’t fault him when they have to go check on other patients. He’s miserable at night, but he’s not so selfish to think that his misery makes him any more important than anyone else in the hospital.

He tries to go to sleep early once visiting hours are over, but he finds that either the pain in his leg is too much for him to relax or the drugs are too strong to actually let him sleep. He manages a few hours of sleep every night, but most of the night is spent in a semi-drugged haze.

Between the pain and the lack of sleep and the loneliness and the obligatory bad hospital food, he’s in a foul mood when he finally gets released from the hospital on Thursday morning.

Enjolras and Combeferre come to pick him up, bringing with them his favorite sweatpants and his softest t-shirt to change into. (He was utterly dismayed to learn Sunday evening that the jeans had worn on Saturday had had to be cut off his body and were now nothing more than scraps. He _loved_ those jeans.) Enjolras and Combeferre talk in hushed voices about the protest this weekend—a silent stand-in in front of the police station to bring attention to the attacks on the sex workers—while Courfeyrac’s doctor gives him some last instructions about taking care of his knee and regulating his pain medication.

Courfeyrac appreciates that the woman is just doing her job, but she really wishes she would shut up and let him _go_ already. He wants to go home. He wants to snuggle up on his couch with the quilt his grandmother made him and watch Disney movies till he forgets all about this stupid hospital stay.

Once he’s finally given the all-clear to be released and he’s signed the last of the paperwork for the insurance claims, Combeferre helps him into a wheelchair while Enjolras gathers up the rest of his things.

“I don’t get why I have to leave the hospital in a fucking wheelchair,” he complains as Combeferre wheels him towards the door. He ignores the scandalized look he gets from a grandmotherly old woman for his language. “I’m perfectly capable of using crutches.”

Crutches which Enjolras carries and which Courfeyrac is not looking forward to using because he used crutches for a week when he was in high school and sprained his ankle during soccer season. He had sworn then that he would never touch the damn things again, but it looked like he doesn’t have a choice now. He can’t even use one of those fun knee-scooters he’s seen around campus because it’s his fucking knee that’s busted in the first place.

“It’s hospital policy,” Combeferre says. “Grantaire wheeled Jehan out of here on Sunday morning—and Jehan has two fully functioning legs. You can use the crutches to your heart’s content when we get to our place.”

Courfeyrac cranes around in his seat. “In _our_ place?” he says, staring up at Ferre, who refuses to look down at him. “What do you mean _our_ place? You’re taking me back to my apartment, aren’t you?”

“Courf, your apartment was broken into,” Enjolras says.

“And that’s nothing that a new set of locks won’t fix—which is something my parents have already made the landlord take care of!”

“We arranged it so you’d be staying with us at our place,” Combeferre says. “Like you used to. It’ll be like old times.”

Courfeyrac sees right through this tactic. It’ll be like old times? Yeah fucking right. This is their excuse for bundling him up and preventing him from letting his life get back to normal. He crosses his arms over his chest. “I thought Jehan was staying with you guys.”

“He moved over to Bahorel’s on Monday,” Combeferre says. “We thought about having you stay with him, but he’s on the fourth floor and you really shouldn’t have to deal with the stairs.”

“We have an elevator,” Enjolras says pleasantly. He looks oddly proud of the fact.

When they get to the car, Combeferre gently brings him to a halt and fusses with the passenger’s seat in the car to rig it so Courfeyrac has the most possible leg room.

“I can stay at my place,” Courfeyrac says. “I _want_ to stay at my place.”

Combeferre helps tug him to his feet, offering him up as a stable support when Courfeyrac has to balance on his left leg. “Courf, your knee is broken. You’re in a lot of pain and your mobility is extremely limited right now. Your doctor said that you shouldn’t be living alone for the time being. Let Enjolras and me help you, okay? Just for the beginning. Just until we know that you really can manage on your own.” He gives Courfeyrac a dirty rotten plaintive look that Courfeyrac can’t possible deny. “We want to help you.”

He huffs. “Fine,” he says, maneuvering himself into the car. “That’ll at least give us plenty of time to finish getting things ready for Sunday.”

He doesn’t miss the look Enjolras and Combeferre share as Enjolras tries to wrestle the crutches into the back seat.

“What?” Courfeyrac says warily. “What is it?”

“We’d feel better if you didn’t come to the protest on Sunday,” Enjolras says.

“What?” Courfeyrac squawks. “Why the hell not?”

“It’s not safe,” Enjolras says.

“Like hell it’s not safe,” he says. “I know for a fact that this whole fucking protest is Combeferre-approved.”

“There’s still a risk,” Combeferre says. “There’s always a risk.”

“It’s a stand-in! I can do standing!” He moves to pull himself out of the car to show them how good he is at standing but he accidentally jostles his right leg and downright whimpers at the pain that shoots up his thigh.

Combeferre gives him a look, then says, “Courf, if this goes wrong and we have to bolt, at the best you won’t be able to get away. At the worst, you’ll get hurt again. I’m sorry, but we’re not willing to risk that.”

Enjolras finally manages to get the crutches situated in the backseat and slides in next to them. “If it makes you feel better, we’re not letting Jehan participate either,” he says. “Or Eponine and Grantaire, for that matter. With the custody of her siblings still undecided, having her or Grantaire getting in trouble will only make things worse.”

Courfeyrac crosses his arms over his chest and slouches in his seat. “I hate you both,” he mutters.

Combeferre smiles at him kindly. “We figured as much. Don’t forget to put on your seatbelt.”

When they reach Combeferre and Enjolras’s apartment, Courfeyrac actually misses having the wheelchair because now he has to navigate the icy sidewalk outside the apartment on fucking crutches and he can’t manage it without having Combeferre bracing him from one side. Once they’re upstairs, Courfeyrac wants to lay down and sleep or maybe just watch kids’ movies because he feels wretched, but Combeferre insists that he eats something before letting him retreat.

“Joly brought over this nice chowder,” Combeferre says. “It’s got bacon in it.”

“Can’t I just sleep instead?”

“You need to eat,” Enjolras says. He uses his obnoxious leader voice—the one that doesn’t leave room for arguments, so Courfeyrac takes a seat and eats the chowder—which is really good and once he’s feeling better he’ll send Joly a thank you text—but mostly he’s just miserable and the last of his pain meds from the hospital are wearing off.  He knows he should be grateful because Enjolras and Combeferre have obviously gone out of their way to accommodate him and all he’s done in return is bark at them.

Combeferre and Enjolras, sensitive to his foul mood, let him eat in solitude.

After he’s done eating, he settles in Combeferre’s room since his old room has been turned into a study room, complete with copious bookshelves and an old pull-out couch that was a hand-me-down from his parents. He feels worse, knowing that he’s kicking Combeferre out of his room for who knows how long and that he’s acting like such a pill on top of it all.

He just wants this all to be over.

At first, he tries to sleep but his knee hurts too much for him to relax and he wants to cry or scream about it all but instead pulls his laptop onto his lap and finds something mindlessly happy to watch.

He’s in the middle of a Pokémon episode—recently added to Netflix—when someone knocks on the door. Part of him wants to be petty and tell whoever it is to go away, but he’s still feeling bad for snapping at Enjolras and Combeferre so he hollers that the door is open and Combeferre lets himself in. He’s got a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of pills in the other.

“Enjolras went down to the pharmacy to get your prescription filled,” he says. He hands Courfeyrac the water and then twists the cap off the pill bottle and hands two pills to him. “That should help with the pain. It probably won’t take it away completely, but this stuff is pretty strong.”

He doesn’t hesitate to take the two pills. It sucks a little that they don’t work immediately, but even the promise that the pain will ease up helps. He has to stretch to reach the nightstand to put the half-filled glass on it and he’s grateful that Combeferre doesn’t offer to do it for him. He’s desperate to have some semblance of control right now. “Sorry I snapped at you and Enj.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “We figured you’d be feeling pretty poorly and we know what that does to you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Do you not remember coming down with flu right after we all moved in together sophomore year? You swung between being desperately clingy and stubbornly independent with no warning.”

“I was clingy, but I wasn’t _desperate_ about it. And besides, I was still better about everything than Enjolras was when he caught it from me.”

Combeferre laughs. “No one is as bad as Enjolras is when he’s sick or hurt. He doesn’t know how to take care of his own body. That said, if we experience the occasional bout of bad temper from you, we’ll let it slide. You might have to put up with bouts of rabid over-protectiveness from us, though. Goodness knows Jehan’s been dealing with it from everyone these last few days.”

Courfeyrac chews on his lip, wondering if maybe now that he’s out of the hospital Jehan will come visit him. He tries really hard not to be petty about it, but he’s hurt that Jehan didn’t come at all.

As though Combeferre can read the emotions on his face—knowing Combeferre, he probably can, the observant bastard—Combeferre smiles. “Grantaire texted,” he says. “He and Jehan are planning on stopping by soon. They want to see you, if you’re feeling up for it.”

“Jehan’s coming?” Damn, he sounds desperate.

Combeferre doesn’t comment on it. Bless his saint-like soul. “That’s what Grantaire said. I’ll even distract him and Enjolras—although they’ve been doing a wonderful job of distracting each other lately—so you can have some time alone with Jehan.”

Fuck, that nearly makes him want to cry too. Maybe he can blame his overly-emotional state on the painkillers. He offers up a smile to Combeferre. “Have I mentioned that you’re the best? Because you really are the best and I really am sorry that I’ve been acting like such a jerk and—”

“Courf, it’s fine,” Combeferre says. “Really. I’ll send Jehan back as soon as he and Grantaire get here. You should try to get some rest in the meantime.”

Courfeyrac makes it through another episode and a half of Pokémon before he hears persistent knocking at the front door. He smiles when he hears Jehan and Grantaire’s voices coming from the living room, and it’s only a moment later that there’s a softer knock on the bedroom door.

Jehan comes, unsurprisingly, bearing a potted flower. It’s a riot of colors and it brightens up the room immediately. Jehan smiles shyly at him as he settles the pot on the window sill, angling it just so to catch the light from the window right. "This'll need to be watered about once every three days."

Courfeyrac holds his hand out to him. “C’mere. I want to get a look at you.”

Jehan climbs onto the bed, his movements a little stiff and he sits cross-legged next to Courfeyrac. Two black eyes and a nose that isn’t as straight as it used to be seem to be the worst of it, but there’s yellow bruising around his throat and his wrists, and when he talks, his voice is a little rougher than usual. He looks as woebegone as he did at New Year’s Eve.

“Sorry I didn’t come see you in the hospital,” Jehan says. “I should have texted or something, so you’d know I wasn’t avoiding you, but I _really_ don’t do well in hospitals. Once they let me go, I really didn’t want to go back.”

Courfeyrac feels a knot of anxiety ease in his chest. He knew there were reasonable explanations for Jehan’s absence. He’s glad to have them confirmed.

“A lot of people don’t like hospitals. I don’t blame you for not wanting to stick around. They’re not exactly happy places.”

“It’s not the death and the sickness and all that that bothers me,” he says. “It’s the smell—that too-clean anti-septic smell. It makes me want to pass out.”

“It can’t possibly be that bad,” Courfeyrac says. Lots of people complain about the smell of hospitals, but he’s never heard of anyone passing out because of it.

“No, I’m serious. When I was sixteen, my dad got really bad kidney stones and had to get them surgically removed. My mom kept dragging me along to the hospital even though my dad and I weren’t even on speaking terms then, and one day his room was particularly stuffy or something, I’m not sure, but I actually passed out—and then after I woke up, I puked. The doctors wouldn’t let me go for two hours because they insisted on running all sorts of tests to make sure I wasn’t really sick or anything. No one believed me when I said it was just the smell.” Jehan shifts a little on the bed. “But how are you feeling?”

“Better now that I’ve got some drugs in me again,” Courfeyrac says, reaching for the little orange pill bottle. “They’ve got me on…Vicodin!” he says, reading the label.

“That’ll fetch a nice price if you want to sell it,” Jehan says. He smiles a little as he shrugs. “Perks of having a drug dealer as your ex.”

Courfeyrac clutches his pill bottle to his chest. “I’m not giving this up for love or money.”

“Hurts that much, then?” Jehan asks. “Is it just your knee, or did something else…?”

“Mostly just the knee,” he says. He lifts up the hem of his shirt, exposing the patchwork bruises that cling to his skin. “This is just soreness more than anything. The doctor said I was lucky that my ribs didn’t break and that none of my organs ruptured or something. Really, the knee is the worst of it.” He doesn’t like the guilty expression on Jehan’s face because he certainly doesn’t blame any of this on him, so he quickly changes the subject. “But enough about my injuries—I swear, Jehan, it’s all people have talked to me about since Sunday—what about you? How’ve you been doing?”

Jehan looks down at his hands. “I’m okay. I mean, I’m hardly allowed to go to the bathroom these days without practically having an armed escort go with me, but…” He shrugs.

“Are you serious?” Courfeyrac asks. “They’ve been that overprotective? Combeferre warned me about it, but I didn’t think it’d be that bad.”

“It’s kind of sweet, really,” Jehan says. “They all think they’re being really subtle about it—Marius ‘just happened’ to be wandering outside my last class yesterday and felt like walking me home ‘on a whim’ even though he lives in the opposite direction. Stuff like that. I know they mean well, but it’d be nice to have some breathing room, you know?”

Courfeyrac nods. “Well, now that I’m out, let’s see if we can divide and conquer, yeah? You need some time alone? Then I will have all our friends at my beck and call to, I don’t know, feed me grapes or something. They will treat me like a king, dammit!”

Jehan laughs and Courfeyrac’s heart falters a little. He loves hearing Jehan laugh. He loves being the one to make Jehan laugh.

“So, are you all settled in at…Bahorel’s, is it?” he says.

Jehan nods. “I wouldn’t have guessed it, but Bahorel makes a pretty good roommate for me.”

“How so?”

“We keep pretty similar hours—up late and kind of grumpy in the morning, so we just give each other space. And he doesn’t mind if I steal his food to cook with as long as I make enough for him, too. And, I don’t know, he doesn’t hover quite as much as everyone else does. I think I’ve talked to him more in the last couple of days than I ever have before, and it’s…it’s nice. I didn’t…I didn’t realize how upset he was by everything that happened with me and Mont.”

“We were all upset, Jehan. We thought he was going to kill you.”

He fiddles with the end of his braid. “Part of me always figured that you were all just annoyed with me—like I shouldn’t have put myself in that position in the first place—and yes, I know it’s not my fault, I know I shouldn’t blame myself for what happened—but I knew you guys were angry and it just made sense to me that you’d be angry at me and not just Mont. But now, living with him is helping me see how much he really cared—and still cares. I mean, he got a new lock for the door when he noticed I kept checking the one he had a few times every night before I went to bed. It makes me feel safe.”

This is the first verbal indication he has that Jehan is more shaken up about what happened than he lets on and he wants to fix it. “Jehan,” he says.

“And,” Jehan says quickly, cutting him off and moving on, “I’ve got my own room. I lived in the dorms my freshman year, and then I moved in with Mont right after that, so I haven’t had my own space like that since I lived with my parents and I’ve forgotten how nice it is.”

“If I’d known you wanted your own space, I could have kipped on the couch. We didn’t have to share the bed at my place.”

“Oh, no no,” Jehan says. “I—right after I moved out, I wasn’t ready to be on my own quite yet. I really needed you then, and I’m really grateful that you didn’t think it was weird or anything. But I’m…I’m doing better now, and now it’s nice to have my own space again. I’m writing again. I’m writing like a fiend, actually.”

“Oh, yeah?” Courfeyrac says, straightening up a little. Writing is a good sign. “Please, my dear poet, speak to me gentle words to ease my bed of pain.”  

Jehan laughs a little and blushes and ducks his head. “Later,” he promises. “Not yet. The words—they’re not right yet. I just sort of…vomit them whenever I put pen to paper. I’ll recite poetry for you once I’ve got it into better shape, but for now it’s just helping me process everything.”

“There’s a lot to process,” he says. He wants to talk to Jehan about what happened, or at the very least let Jehan know that he’s willing to talk about it, but he knows not to push the issue.

Jehan is quiet for a moment and he leans forward to inspect the bulky brace that keeps Courfeyrac’s leg immobilized. “It’s a shame they didn’t give you a normal cast.”

“Those things are hot and itchy. Shame is not the word I’d use.”

But Jehan shakes his head. “I would have made Grantaire paint it for you. It’s something he used to do for his mom.” With gentle fingers, he traces the metal supports of the brace. “How does your knee look?”

“Awful,” he says. “I can barely stand to look at it—bruised and swollen and I’m going to have this great big scar across my knee cap.”

“Aren’t people supposed to find battle scars attractive? It’s a story of how strong you are. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it.” He hesitates for a moment, still not making eye contact. “Do you…do you remember much of what happened?” Then, “Were you awake for it?”

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “I blacked out pretty quickly,” he says. He can recall bits and pieces of the attack, but mostly his memories consist of terror that consumed him and pain erupting from his knee. “I don’t really remember much of it.”

“Good,” Jehan says. “That’s good.”

“Do you?”

Jehan looks up at him, startled, and it’s suddenly all too clear to him that Jehan hasn’t been sleeping well. Were it not for the black eyes, Courfeyrac is certain there would be bags under his eyes. “I—I didn’t get hurt as badly as you did,” he says, looking down again. “I never passed out, so I can remember everything pretty well.”

“I’m surprised that Gueulemer didn’t hurt you more. Considering everything.”

Jehan traces patterns against the comforter with his finger. “He would have,” he says eventually. “He—remember back before Thanksgiving? When he ruined my poetry notebook?”

Courfeyrac’s insides suddenly feel cold because he remembers with frightening clarity the rape threats that had Jehan panicking in Grantaire’s apartment all those months ago. “Shit, Jehan, he didn’t—”

“No, he didn’t,” Jehan says. “But he would have, if the police hadn’t shown up when they did. He…he took great pleasure in telling me exactly what he was going to do to me. When I try to sleep, I usually just hear him over and over again. I’ve been writing a lot at night because of that. Writing helps me ignore it.”

“Have you told anyone else about this?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t really want to talk about it. Not yet. Maybe later, but maybe not. I mean, he didn’t _do_ anything, not really. And…” He shrugs. “Grantaire knows I’m having trouble sleeping and he gave me the name of the therapist he used to see, so the option is there. When I’m ready.”

“When you’re ready,” Courfeyrac repeats. “And you know you can talk to me or to any of our friends. We’re here for you. You’re not alone in this.”

“That wasn’t even the worst part. Not really.”

He feels sick—what else did Gueulemer do to him if _that_ wasn’t the worst part?  “What was?” he asks, taking Jehan’s hand in his own. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I was so worried about you,” Jehan says in a small sort of voice. “I was _terrified_ for you. Even when...even while Gueulemer was choking me, he said that the others had killed you and I was so scared for you. I couldn’t bear to think that I was the whole reason you got dragged into this, that I was the one who put you in danger. And then once we were at the hospital and everyone started asking me questions, no one would tell me what happened to you—they wouldn’t even tell me if you were still alive—and it was stupid, but all I could think...all I could think was _I never got the chance to kiss him again_.”

Of all the things Courfeyrac expected him to say, that…that was not it. “Jehan, I—”

“Please,” Jehan says, “let me finish. I need to say this.”

“Okay.”

Jehan licks his lips and stares at their hands. “I _really_ like you, Courf. I...I don’t know how I would have gotten through these last couple of months without you and I don’t know how I was so blind about everything. While Mont was busy trying to tear me down, you were always there to build me back up again and I don’t know when my feelings about you became feelings for you, but they did.” He looks up shyly. “And unless I’m mistaken, your feelings on all of this haven’t changed at all.”

“I know you better and I care about you more than I did in the beginning,” Courfeyrac says, “but other than that, no changes here.”

“Here’s the thing, though,” Jehan says. “I’m—my life is in shambles right now. I’m still getting phone calls and emails from Mont and there’s a good chance that he—or someone on his behalf—is following me and I’m just dealing with a lot of shit right now and if you want—if we want this to become something and not just be some crash-and-burn rebound that just hurts both of us in the end, I’m going to need time. I’m not—I can’t be in a relationship right now, Courf, not with everything that’s happened, and it’s unfair of me to ask you to wait like this, I know, but I just—I couldn’t not let you know I feel and I understand if you don’t want to put your life on hold for me. I’m not asking that of you.”

Courfeyrac squeezes his hand. “You never had to ask,” he says. “I was willing to wait from day one. And for the record, even if you hadn’t insisted on us taking some time before we jump into anything, I would have. You’re dealing with a break-up, Jehan, and I know what it’s like to be the rebound boyfriend and it’s something I try to actively avoid. And this isn’t a normal break up either. You broke up with a manipulative, abusive crime lord and you deserve all the time you need to recover from that.”

“Don’t call him a crime lord, that’s giving him way too much credit.”

Courfeyrac laughs he tugs Jehan so that he’s snuggled up against him. “I’m okay waiting for us to be officially dating. You are worth the wait. And in the meantime, I’m still here for whatever support you need from me.”

Jehan readjusts against Courfeyrac’s side so he can lean in and press a kiss against his lips. This is different from their kiss back at Christmas, devoid of the desperation for affection that Jehan had been so full of back then. But this is sweet and shy and full of hope and promise and Courfeyrac sinks back against his pillows and pulls Jehan down with him. He can feel Jehan smile against his lips and he deepens the kiss, reveling in the taste of his mouth, the feel of his skin against his hands.

In the end, it’s Jehan who breaks the kiss—though Courfeyrac likes to imagine that he’s pulling away reluctantly—and Jehan wears a shy smile. It’s not an uncommon expression for Jehan, but Courfeyrac thinks he looks a touch more smug now than he usually does.

“I didn’t want to pass up my chance to do that again,” Jehan says.

Courfeyrac laughs. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re not running out of opportunities to do that any time soon.”

“Good,” Jehan says, settling back against Courfeyrac’s side. He catches sight of Courfeyrac’s laptop, which has been sitting on the bed, neglected, since Jehan’s arrival. “Is that—were you watching Indigo League before I showed up?”

“Fuck yeah I was watching Indigo League. They’ve got two seasons up online now.”

Jehan laughs. “That is the best news I’ve heard in a long time.”

“Well, heaven help me if I stand between you and Pokémon,” he says. He pulls the computer back onto his lap, angles the screen so he and Jehan can see it well enough, and presses play.

They’re still snuggled up like that when Combeferre comes into the room nearly an hour later. Jehan jerks away, as though startled or embarrassed to be caught like this, but Combeferre waves a dismissive hand at them and Courfeyrac wraps an arm around Jehan’s shoulders to keep him close.

“You look…frazzled,” Courfeyrac says as Combeferre closes the door and leans up against it.

“I know I said I’d distract those two for you, but I cannot stand listening to them anymore. I’m either hiding in here with the two of you, or you’re both going out there with me so I don’t have to deal with them alone.”

“Are they really that bad?” Jehan asks. “R promised he’d be on his best behavior.”

Combeferre adjusts his glasses. “Yes, well, their best behavior is still obnoxious. They can’t say more than three sentences to each other without finding something to argue over.”

Courfeyrac debates for a moment if he wants to go out there and wade through whatever havoc Enjolras and Grantaire are causing for each other, and decides he doesn’t. It’s too nice being here with Jehan curled up against him. Instead, he pats the bed on his left side. “Want to watch Pokémon with us?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might actually be a little bit in love with this chapter, so I hope you guys enjoyed it too :] Thank you all ever so much for your continued support of this story. You are all the best.
> 
> I'm under a writing deadline for some other stuff, so I don't think there will be a Friday chapter this week. Next chapter will be up on Tuesday. In the mean time, feel free to come say hi over at my [tumblr](kingesstropolis.tumblr.com) <3


	62. Chapter Sixty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras gets one step closer to sorting out whatever's going on between him and Grantaire

On the day of the protest, Enjolras has everyone meet him at The Corinth—it’s late morning, so the bar is pretty well deserted, whereas the Musain is always packed this time of day—to go over some ground rules. It’s risky, what they’re doing. As far as protests go, a stand-in is pretty benign, but a stand-in in front of a police station is riskier. The sidewalk outside the station is public grounds, so they have every right to gather there, but if they make it too difficult for police business to be conducted, then they’ll be charged with obstruction of justice. He and Combeferre have spent a lot of time to minimize the risk of arrest for everyone involved and he’s instructing a group of newcomers—and they have a lot of newcomers, people from the awareness run last month and some of the sex workers and their friends and families—about passive resistance when he sees Courfeyrac hobble into the bar on his crutches.

He exchanges a glance with Combeferre, who’s instructing his own group and who looks just as livid that Courfeyrac has shown up, before he quickly excuses himself to go talk to Courfeyrac.

“You’re not coming,” he says, cutting across the room because Courfeyrac is having trouble navigating around the tables on his crutches and appears to have gotten one of his crutches stuck in a chair while attempting to move it out of the way. “Combeferre and I have told you—”

“Keep your hair on,” Courfeyrac says. “I know I’ve been banned from all interesting activities for the duration, but—” He shakes his crutch, trying to dislodge the chair, but it only makes it worse. “I swear I am going to beat the person who invented these damn things with one of them.”

Enjolras pulls out a chair so Courfeyrac can sit down and from there helps him to free his crutch from the other chair. “So if you’re not coming for the protest, why are you here?” he asks. The Corinth is a good twenty minute walk from his apartment and he imagines it probably took Courfeyrac twice that long to get here on crutches.

“I came to bring you these,” he says, procuring a large stack of business cards out of his backpack. They’re still warm from printing when Courfeyrac hands them over.

The design on the card is simple, but bold. A detailed red border and red text on a white background. _Make our streets safe for everyone_ the cards read.

“What are they?” he asks.

“We’re starting a letter writing campaign,” Courfeyrac says.

“We are?” He flips the card over and there’s the address for the police station and the URL for a website with directions to see the website for FAQs and sample letters.

“Well, I am,” Courfeyrac says. He sounds petulant, like he’s ready to fight for this. Granted, Courfeyrac has sounded petulant about a lot of things over the last few days and Enjolras and Combeferre have had to bully him into letting them help take care of him. But this is…different. Somehow. “Don’t take this from me. I need to be useful, Enjolras. I can’t just sit around with my thumb up my ass.”

“Just because you’re less mobile right now doesn’t make you any less useful.”

“I _feel_ less useful,” Courfeyrac says. “Whether or not you and the rest of the world thinks differently, I feel useless and I want to change that. Hence writing letters. My knee is broken, not my hands. This is something I can do. Between your protest and the insane amount of letters I’m about to swarm the police station with, someone’s going to take notice and we’ll finally get them to _do_ something. This has been going on for _months_ and that’s not okay. You can hand out the cards at the protest if people start asking questions—that way you won’t have to break your vow of silence or whatever—and we can get the word out.”

Enjolras flips the card back over and studies the front of the card. The border around the edges is actually made up of the names of all the sex workers who have been attacked. Every last name. “How long have you been thinking about doing this?”

Courfeyrac shrugs. “About two days.” He nods at the card. “Your boyfriend did all the design work for the cards for me last minute. He’s a gem, he is.”

“Grantaire is not my boyfriend,” Enjolras says. He can feel himself blushing and when he looks up from the business card, Courfeyrac is waggling his eyebrows at him.

“He could be if you wanted him to,” he says.

“Well, I don’t,” he says. “And I need to get back to explaining—”

“To leadering,” Courfeyrac corrects. “Your poor sheep look lost without you.”

“They’re not sheep,” Enjolras says. “Will you get home okay?”

“I’ll get a cab,” he says. “It’s great, Enjolras. Cabs actually stop for me now. Besides, I’m only going over to the Musain. Me and the rest of the Protest Rejects are meeting up for drinks and a pity party.”

“Courf, you know why we—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he says, brushing off his comment with a wave of his hand. “But it’s no fun being excluded, so we’re all going to sit around and drink non-fair trade coffee and talk trash about you.”

Enjolras feels the barest spike of distress at the idea that Grantaire will be trash talking him with Courfeyrac but he shoves the feeling aside before he can dwell on it.

When Courfeyrac is gone, Enjolras hands out stacks of Courfeyrac’s business cards and explains about the letter writing campaign and they all head down to the police station to take up their positions. He and Combeferre have carefully calculated how close they can stand together while making people uncomfortable enough to take notice, but leaving enough room for people to get in and out of the police station without much difficulty. The main door to the station is a public entrance and Enjolras knows that most of the urgent police work involves the officers leaving out the back entrance, but it’ll only take one officer who thinks their pseudo-blockade is obstructing police work before they all get arrested.

To everyone’s surprise—Enjolras’s included—the protest goes well and without any sort of disaster. The biggest hitch they have is Jehan’s abrupt appearance right before they’re set to begin with insistence that he be included.

“No,” Combeferre says. “Absolutely not. We’ve talked about this—”

“You and Enjolras have talked about this,” Jehan says. “I was never included in the discussion. I think you’re right to not let Courfeyrac participate, but there is absolutely no reason to exclude me as well.”

“You’re hurt,” Combeferre says. “That’s reason enough.”

Enjolras is surprised at the steely look Jehan gives Combeferre. Grantaire has warned him about Jehan’s stubbornness on a number of occasions, but this is the first time he’s really seen it.

“I’ve done a lot more than standing still with a lot worse injuries than this over the last few months.”

“He’s got a point,” Enjolras says.

“Fine,” Combeferre says, though he doesn’t sound happy about it. “But you are going to stand farthest from the station door and if _anything_ goes wrong, you are going to run like hell. Do you understand?”

“Yessir,” Jehan says, dutifully taking a spot on the edge of the crowd.

Other than that small mishap—which wasn’t even a mishap and Enjolras thinks he should have expected something like that anyway—the protest passes without a hitch. Enjolras even manages to hand out all of the business cards that Courfeyrac gave him. At the end of their allotted two hours, their crowd disperses and Combeferre makes nice with the reporter who’d come out to see what the fuss about. Enjolras let’s Combeferre handle the PR angle. He lingers nearby in case Combeferre needs him and answers questions that a few of the new protesters have for him. The crowd has more or less dispersed when Enjolras notices Officer Javert descending the front steps.

“What are you school boys after now?” Javert asks. “Still up in arms over your campus’s housing policies?”

Les Amis have a robust history with Javert. Enjolras has personally been arrested by the man a handful of times and while Enjolras respects the man’s dedication to justice, he thinks that Javert doesn’t always see the complexity of the issues at hand. “We’re still working with campus administration about the housing,” Enjolras says. “But today was about the rampant attacks on sex workers that the police have refused to do anything about.”

Javert scoffs. “We’ve been rather busy protecting people who actually _obey_ the law.”

Enjolras immediately wants to launch into a tirade about how the law should protect people equally and that just because sex workers choose to sell an “illegal” commodity—which is wrongly criminalized to begin with—doesn’t mean that they are any less worthy of protection and safety and that Javert’s rebuttal smacks of classism and privilege and that no one deserves being subject to that kind of violence but he suspects that if actually says any of that, he’ll just end up punching Javert and he really can’t afford to be arrested again. Instead, he remembers Courfeyrac’s letter writing campaign and he imagines that he can convince Courfeyrac without much difficulty to address large portions of those letters directly to Javert and he smiles. “I’m afraid we’re just going to have to disagree on that matter,” he says, feeling smug. “But I’m sure you’ll be hearing from my people soon enough.”

He doesn’t hang around to hear Javert respond and instead seeks out Combeferre who’s wrapping up with the reporter.

“I’m meeting Eponine at the Musain,” Combeferre says once the reporter has left. “Do you want to come?”

“I’ll pass,” Enjolras says. He’s gotten better over the last few months at realizing that Combeferre’s polite invitations to join him and Eponine places are really just polite invitations and that everyone involved is happier when Enjolras declines.

On his way home, he swings by his favorite Chinese place and orders enough takeout to feed him and Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac nearly spilled boiling water on himself two days ago while trying to make some pasta and navigate the kitchen on crutches at the same time, which resulted in Combeferre outright banning him from using the oven and stove until he’s a bit better on his feet, so Enjolras knows his offering of takeout will be appreciated.

When he gets home, though, he finds that Courfeyrac is on the couch, his leg propped up on the coffee table, and there’s a plate of half-eaten leftovers on the kitchen counter next to the sink. It’s foolish, he supposes, but he feels a little hurt his meager attempt to take care of his friend ends up being useless.

The feeling is short-lived, though, because Courfeyrac tilts his head back to see Enjolras and says, “Is that General Tso’s chicken that I smell? Come to me, you glorious god of a man.”

Enjolras laughs and joins Courfeyrac on the couch, pulling the coffee table closer to them while trying not to disturb Courf’s leg too much. “I saw the plate by the sink. I thought you already ate.”

Courfeyrac shakes his head. “I was going to make myself some mac and cheese—Combeferrre’s kitchen ban be damned—only then I started panicking about what would happen if I _did_ spill boiling something or other all over myself when I’m home alone and decided that wasn’t exactly an experience I wanted to have, so I microwaved some leftovers I found in the fridge. Turns out, though, that those leftovers are like three weeks old and moldy. I didn’t notice until I’d eaten half a plate of it, so you might have to take me to the hospital later tonight for food poisoning. But I’ve been sitting here for the last hour trying to work up the energy to get off my ass to get something else to eat, so really, you have perfect timing.”

Enjolras divvies up the food onto Styrofoam plates and passes one off to Courfeyrac.

“Jehan texted and told me the protest went well,” Courfeyrac says around a mouthful of food. “No one got arrested?”

“Not a soul,” Enjolras says. “And Combeferre spoke with a reporter afterwards and I managed to talk with Javert without punching him in the throat.”

“Awww, my baby is all grown up and learning self-control!”

“I was thinking we should address your letters about the attacks directly to Javert.”

Courfeyrac laughs, clearly delighted with the idea. “Do you mind if Jehan comes over in a bit?”

“Wasn’t he over here yesterday?”

“And the day before,” Courfeyrac says. “And the one before that. But you see, Enjolras, I’m rather homebound at the moment. My company must come to me. We were going to watch a movie—you can stay and watch if you want—but we can probably relocate somewhere else, though, if that’s too much trouble.”

“I don’t mind. It’s fine. Did you check with Combeferre? He and Eponine are at the Musain, but they might be coming back here afterwards.” This apartment is a much better sanctuary at the moment than Eponine’s is. Combeferre has complained about the lack of “alone time” over at her place on several occasions.

But Courfeyrac shakes his head. “Already texted him,” he says. “Grantaire’s watching her siblings tonight so they can go on a proper date. Apparently she’s really nervous about the custody hearing next week and Ferre wants to get her mind off of it.”

“She has nothing to worry about,” Enjolras says. He and Courfeyrac both TA for Lamarque, who’s acting as her lawyer _pro bono_ for these hearings, but Enjolras has done more work specifically on this custody case. The social worker likes Eponine and will testify in her favor. He was a hard time imagining that this won’t go well.

“I know you’re planning on going to the hearing with Lamarque, but I was thinking about asking if he wouldn’t mind me tagging along. I think I’d like to be there for her and Azelma and Gavroche. Moral support, you know, especially since Combeferre won’t be able to go to the hearing. Family and lawyers only and all that.”

“That’s a good idea,” he says, impressed that Courfeyrac thinks of such things. It never would have occurred to him to provide moral support like that. “I’ll back you up when you bring it up with Lamarque. When’s Jehan coming over?”

“A few hours still,” he says. “He’s got a paper due on Monday that he wants to finish before he comes over.”

“What movie are you going to watch?”

“ _Coraline_.”

“Isn’t that that Tim Burton-y kids’ movie with the people who have buttons for eyes?” Enjolras asks, shuddering. The trailer for that movie had given him nightmares.

“It’s not Tim Burton.”

“But it is Tim Burton-y,” he says. “I think I’ll pass.”

“Here’s an idea,” Courfeyrac says. “Jehan and I can snuggle up here, and you can go over to Grantaire’s place and hang out with him.”

As has become the pattern of late, his face flushes at the mention of Grantaire. “He’s not my boyfriend,” he says automatically.

The look on Courfeyrac’s face is absolutely devilish. “Who said anything about boyfriends?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“There’s nothing—why would I want to go over to his place in the first place?”

“Because you like staring at Grantaire?” Courfeyrac suggests. “Besides, he’d probably like the help wrangling Gavroche and Azelma. Well, mostly Gavroche. Azelma mostly keeps to herself. Gavroche said he thinks you’re pretty cool once you get the stick out of your ass and he said he’s willing to be your wingman when you man up and ask Grantaire out.”

“I’m not—there’s not—how do you even know what Gavroche thinks?” he demands, feeling flustered and wishing Courfeyrac would just shut up.

“He and I have been texting,” Courfeyrac says with a smile. “He started texting me when I was in the hospital to cheer me up. And it’s pointless to deny that there’s not anything between you and Grantaire when even a twelve year old can see it.”

“Will you stop already?” Enjolras snaps. He gathers up the leftovers to put them away.

Courfeyrac catches him by the sleeve of his shirt. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Enjolras, I tease you all the time and you never react like that unless something is wrong. So, I will ask again. What’s wrong?”

“Grantaire’s not my boyfriend,” Enjolras says.

“Yeah,” Courfeyrac says. “I know. We’ve been over this. I just think you’re both being a bit ridiculous. It’s obvious you like each other, but neither of you are doing anything about it. Not that my friends’ romantic lives are any of my business, but I think it’s silly, so I tease you about it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

Courfeyrac studies him for a long moment before wrapping his hand around his wrist and tugging him back to the couch. “Come on,” he says, shifting his leg into a more comfortable position. “Tell Doctor Courfeyrac everything.”

“Doctor?” Enjolras asks, raising an eyebrow and Courfeyrac treats him with a bright, infectious smile.

“I’m the _love_ doctor.”

“Okay, no,” he says, getting to his feet again. “I’m not doing this.”

Courfeyrac catches the back of his shirt and tugs him back down. “I can be serious,” he says, giving Enjolras a plaintive look. “You’re bothered by something which I have unwittingly contributed to, and I want to make it better. Talk to me.”

Enjolras groans and spends about two minutes looking at anything but Courfeyrac before he manages to loosen his tongue enough to talk. He rushes through his dilemma, not wanting to stop and think about what he’s saying because if he stops and thinks about it he’ll clam up. So he explains that he’s never given much thought to labels but that he always felt comfortable in using the term “asexual” to describe himself. For years now, that’s just how he’s seen himself. Sexual and romantic attraction weren’t things he had to deal with. But now, all of a sudden, he’s got Grantaire on his mind all the time—and it’s not just that he’s thinking about Grantaire. He’s thinking about kissing Grantaire and running his hands through Grantaire’s hair and holding Grantaire when he’s feeling down. Part of him wants to _do_ something to make his life inextricably tangled with Grantaire’s, but the rest of him thinks that sounds like an utterly awful idea, and all these thoughts and all these feelings—he doesn’t feel comfortable with himself anymore. Like maybe he’s not really asexual. Maybe he’s not the person he thought he thought he was. He feels like this is making him into someone he doesn’t recognize and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.

“And I’ve been freaking out about this for weeks,” he finishes. “Aren’t people supposed to figure this out when they’re like fourteen?”

Courfeyrac looks at him for a long moment before speaking. “Sounds like you’ve had a lot on your mind,” he says. “And really, I’m sorry that my jokes have this worse for you. If you’d called me out earlier, I would have stopped. I just…by any chance, have you talked to Joly about this at all?”

“Why would I talk to Joly about this?”

“Because up until his birthday two summers ago when he got so drunk that he tried to make out with every guy in the room and eventually left his own birthday party to go back to Bossuet’s shitty flat with him, Joly thought he was straight. I know it took him a while to figure it all out for himself, and if any of our friends know what it’s like to have a sexual identity crisis, it’s him.”

“I don’t want to be having a sexual identity crisis,” Enjolras says. “I don’t want to be anything other than asexual. That word feels _right_ to me. It’s always felt right to me.”

“Okay,” Courfeyrac says as though it’s the simplest thing in the world. “If that’s the term that feels right to you, then keep it.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It’s not?”

“No!” he says. He practically whines the word and he hates himself for sounding like that. “This… _thing_ with Grantaire complicates everything.”

“Well, let’s start with the basics,” he says.

“The basics?”

Courfeyrac nods. “I’m just trying to help you out here, Enj, because it sounds like you really need to talk this over with someone, but you know me. I ask questions that are none of my business all the time and if it’s not something you want me to know, you just have to tell me and I’ll shut up and never bring it up again. That said, do you want to have sex with Grantaire?”

“I—no? I don’t know! I don’t really think about it. I mean, I’ve never had sex so I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I just—I want to kiss him. I swear, Courf, that man’s _mouth_ —don’t laugh at me.”

Courfeyrac quickly sobers his expression, though the corners of his lips are twitching. “I’m not laughing,” he says. “Promise.”

Enjolras gives him a skeptical look. He’s not talking about this if Courfeyrac is just going to laugh at him for it.

“So you want to kiss him?” Courfeyrac prompts.

"I’ve thought about it.”

“Kissing isn’t necessarily sexual,” Courfeyrac says. “It can be platonic or romantic without being sexual.”

“But people think it’s sexual,” he says. “What if—what if I kiss him, and he thinks it means I want to have sex with him? Because I don’t know that I do.”

“He won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I know because Grantaire’s not a dickhead and assuming that someone wants to have sex with you right after they kiss you is kind of a dickhead thing to do. Grantaire cares about you. He’s not—whatever his flaws, he’s not the sort of person to just assume that you want to have sex with him. If anything, if you decide that having sex is something you want to do with him, you’ll probably have to convince him that you really do want him.”

Enjolras pauses and thinks over all the self-disparaging remarks that Grantaire makes about himself on a regular basis. It’s not something he does to seek attention. It’s just how he views himself, which makes Enjolras want to shake him because Grantaire is blind to all the wonderful parts of himself. He thinks Courfeyrac is right. Grantaire is the sort of person who will second-guess every ounce of happiness that comes his way because he doesn’t think he’s worthy of it, when all Enjolras wants to do is give him that happiness.

“It wouldn’t be fair, anyway,” Enjolras says.

“What wouldn’t be fair?”

“He deserves to be happy—and how happy can he really be in a relationship with someone who might not ever want to have sex with him?”

“Don’t you think that’s something you should ask him?”

“I don’t want to ask him.”

Courfeyrac raises his eyebrows.

“What if he says he’s not interested in a relationship with me if I can’t—if I don’t want to—?”

“You’re human,” Courfeyrac says. “And part of being human is being vulnerable and opening up to people. Maybe you’ll get rejected if you talk to him, but maybe you won’t and maybe a relationship with Grantaire will be everything you want it to be.”

“And what if it’s not? What if he says that he can handle it, but he can’t and he starts drinking again because he thinks I’m repulsed by him and that’s why we don’t have sex?”

“Okay, Captain Worst Case Scenario, if he says he can handle it and it turns out that he can’t, then you two break up. That’s what adults do when relationships don’t work. You break up to keep from hurting each other.”

“I liked it better when I didn’t have to worry about any of this.”

“I’m not going to offer you advice on what to do,” Courfeyrac says, “because I know you’ve got this and I trust that you can make it through. There’s not really a defined right or wrong in this situation, Enjolras.”  


“It’d be nicer if you just told me what to do,” he says petulantly, which makes Courfeyrac laugh.

“Look, Enj, however you choose to define yourself is _your_ business,” he says. “Your identity belongs to you and no one else. If you do decide that a romantic relationship with Grantaire—or with anyone, for that matter—that doesn’t change how you identify yourself. Even if one day you have sex with someone and you absolutely love having sex with that person, that doesn’t change who you are.” Courfeyrac sighs. “I love labels, I do—they help so many people when they’re trying to figure out themselves—but sometimes I wonder if we close ourselves off to new experiences because we tie something as complex as our sexuality to a single word. I think sexuality is a lot more fluid for a lot of people than we assume.”

“That doesn’t exactly help me figure out this whole mess.”

“Look, maybe you’re ace and sex will never be something that you want—or maybe you’re ace and you’ll find that you enjoy sex because how it makes you and partner feel. Maybe—and I really hate to say this, because I’m sure you’ve heard it before—maybe you’re a late bloomer and you’ll find out that you are sexually attracted to people. Maybe you’re gray-ace or demisexual. Maybe you’re confusing romantic attraction for sexual attraction, and maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re just, I don’t know, Grantaire-sexual. Or Grantaire-romantic. No matter what, though, no one gets to tell you who you are or how you should define yourself—and if they do, then they’re an absolute dick and I’ll set them straight.”

Enjolras is silent for a minute.

“Do you really think I can figure this out?” he asks because from his end, figuring this out has seemed like a herculean effort that was doomed from the start.

“Yes, I do,” Courfeyrac says. “Labels are words and words are tools you’re an expert at using. Use that to your advantage and just go talk to Grantaire.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

Courfeyrac sighs and slumps against the couch. “We were so close,” he says to no one in particular.

“What?” Enjolras says.

“Here I was hoping that you were finally going to get everything sorted out, but I guess not. Not yet, at least.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you and Grantaire are obnoxious when you’re snapping at each other because of this weird unresolved tension you’ve got going and you two really need to get your shit together.”

Enjolras splutters and Courfeyrac laughs at him.

“Seriously, Enj,” Courfeyrac says. “Take your time. Don’t rush into things just because me and all our friends are sick of your shenanigans. We’ll survive. Do what’s right for you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends :] I'm delighted that so many of you seemed to love last week's chapter as much as I did! I hope that this week's chapter isn't a bit of a let down. This chapter has given me trouble for ages and I woke up yesterday morning convinced that it no longer fits with everything else that's going on in the story and that the whole discussion at the end is too didactic ~~and in an effort of full disclosure, I wrote the first draft of this chapter right at the end of my own sexual identity crisis at the age of twenty-three and it was something I needed to write to help me process everything and I'm not sure if it still has a place in the story but I have too many personal emotions tied to the end of this chapter that I couldn't bear to cut it~~ so yeah. Many apologies if it feels as out of place and out of character as I worry it might.
> 
> I'm still under writing deadlines--I'm trying to whip my Les Mis Big Bang project into shape, which means I have to crank out about another 20,000 words in the next week--so I probably won't have time to take care of the edits for the next chapter to be a Friday chapter. BUT I will be sure to make sure it's ready to be posted next Tuesday.
> 
> I love you all. You're wonderful.


	63. Chapter Sixty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eponine attends the custody hearing for her siblings

Considering Eponine wasn’t even at the first custody hearing for her siblings—a fact that she still swears about when she thinks no one can hear her—she thinks the second hearing goes much better. Lamarque, Enjolras’s much vaunted mentor, has agreed to act as her _pro bono_ lawyer, and she managed to impress Gavroche and Azelma’s social worker enough that the woman told her over the phone that she’s going to recommend that Eponine be appointed her siblings legal guardian. Enjolras and Courfeyrac, both of whom are TAs for Lamarque's classes, are both in the court room with her, and Combeferre, who gave the two of them a ride but technically isn’t allowed in the court room during the proceedings, is waiting out in the hall for them.

It’s been a long battle trying to get her siblings out of her parents clutches, but Eponine feels like they’re finally on the right path and she hopes so, so much that getting Gavroche and Azelma out of her parents’ house now will save them from years of crippling emotional damage later in life. For once in her life, Eponine thinks things are going to go her way.

Until her parents show up.

There’s a bit of an uproar when her parents walk in—fifteen minutes into the hearing, and up to their usual manipulative tricks—and for several minutes it’s all Eponine can do not to scream because she wants to be done with them and she wants them out of her life and she wants them away from her little siblings.

But once the commotion dies down and her dad finishes telling his atrocious little sob story about how Azelma and Gavroche were wrongfully taken from them and once it’s verified for certain that yes, they are the parents, the judge lets them stay.

Apparently, Courfeyrac explains to her in a hushed voice as Lamarque tries to protest their presence, while her parents no longer have custodial rights to their children, they still maintain other legal parental rights. They still have a say in what happens to Gavroche and Azelma.

“What was the point of getting them out of my parents’ house if _this_ was going to happen?” she hisses to Courfeyrac.

“If things go our way, they won’t be able to do shit like this anymore,” Courfeyrac says. “But for now, the judge is legally obligated to let them stay and technically he’s supposed to take their opinions into account, though he doesn’t have to.”

She looks up from Courfeyrac when the judge announces that he’s going to allow her parents to stay and that they will be able to voice an opinion, but that in the end, this will be _his_ decision and he right now he expects them to sit down and be quiet for the rest of the proceedings.

Eponine glares at her parents when they politely obey. They’re only ever this polite when there’s something in it for them.

Once things have settled, Lamarque makes a case to grant Eponine legal guardianship and the social worker backs him up. The judge asks Eponine some questions about her job and her apartment and handling the stresses of taking care of her siblings.  He asks Gav and Azelma how they like living with her, and for a few minutes, Eponine thinks that maybe things will still go her way, even with her parents here. Maybe for once in their life, they’re putting someone else’s happiness in front of their own.

Until her mother stands up and raises some bullshit concern about Grantaire.

“Grantaire?” the judge asks, looking frustrated at this sudden interruption. “Who’s Grantaire?”

Everyone turns to look at Eponine and she stands up and smooths down her skirt—her nicest pencil skirt because damn straight is she trying to make a good impression.

“Grantaire is my roommate, sir,” she says. “He’s—” she doesn’t want to mention that he helps her cover rent and that if it weren’t for him, she would have lost her apartment not long after she got it, but she needs to say something. “He’s lived with me for the last year and a half. He’s my oldest friend.”

“He’s also a drunk,” her dad says. “And a homosexual. My wife and I—as good, Christian parents—how can we consent to let our children live in such a place? And poor Garrish—”

“Gavroche,” her mother corrects. Her dad was always shit with names.

“Gavroche,” her dad repeats. “Could any man in good conscience leave his son with such a man? For as long as I’ve known him, Grantaire has been a man of vice. His…intentions toward Gavroche might not be…correct.”

Eponine is actually rendered speechless at her dad’s ridiculous accusations and when Gav pipes up to say something, Courfeyrac puts his hand over his mouth and hisses, “Not now.”

It’s Enjolras who gets to his feet, though, and defends Grantaire’s character. “Your honor, sir,” Enjolras says, deferring to authority in a way that Eponine wasn’t sure was possible until now, “I’ve known Grantaire for several months now, and while it’s true that he does, on occasion, drink to excess, he’s been sobering up for the last few months—in part because he wanted to set a responsible example for Gavroche and Azelma. Not to mention, it’s completely absurd—and not to mention insulting—to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia. Grantaire is no more a danger to Gavroche and Azlema than I am, and to the best of my knowledge, he’s been an asset for both of them.”

The judge calls the social worker up to the bench and they talk in quiet voices for a few minutes. Eponine has no doubt that the judge is asking her what she knows about Grantaire and if he really is a good of an influence as Enjolras said, but Eponine is also reeling a little from the fact that she just heard _Enjolras_ stick up for _Grantaire_. Considering what an ass he was when she first met him, she didn’t think this day would ever come.

When the judge and the social worker have finished talking, he announces that he’s postponing his final decision until they can schedule another hearing where Grantaire can be in attendance.

Eponine watches her parents as they leave, even though she should be listening to Enjolras and Courfeyrac and Lamarque rehash the hearing together. Her parents are putting on another show—the heartbroken and aggrieved parents. Shit, she’s surprised that they didn’t pull some bullshit sob story about how they’ve seen the error of their ways and want to bring Gavroche and Azelma home with them. Every action, every step is just another ploy, another manipulation just like it’s always been with them—and she hates them for it.

As soon as they’re out of the court room, she’s on her feet to storm after them, heedless to the way her sister and Lamarque call her back.

She bursts out of the courtroom, startling Combeferre who was sitting on a bench and reading a book just outside. She catches up with her parents half-way down stairs to the courthouse.

“What the hell is your problem?!” she shouts at them.

Combeferre catches up to her and places a gentle hand on her arm, and she’s vaguely aware that he’s asking her what’s happened and who are these people, but she’s too angry to pay him any attention right now.

Her parents turn around and she cringes at her dad’s sleazy smile.

“What, Ponine?” he says. “No kiss for your old man?”

“Oh, fuck you,” she hisses. “What were you two playing at back there? I know you don’t actually miss them!”

“We just want to be a family again,” her mother says.

“Bullshit!”

“Eponine,” Combeferre says gently. “Maybe we should—”

“Why can’t you just let us be happy?” she demands of her parents. Her eyes are stinging. “Why does it always have to be about the pair of you? Just let us be!”

“But you see, this has everything to do with us,” her dad says. “We’ve been losing quite a bit of our…additional income since they left.”

“Are you serious?” she says. “ _That’s_ what this is about? Your fucking scams aren’t as successful?”

“It’s a family business,” he says.

“So that’s why you threw Grantaire under the bus like that? You fucking _like_ Grantaire!”

“And I like money in my pockets a lot more,” he says. “You know, you could always come back yourself. You were always a dab hand at the old tricks.”

“Are you shitting me?” she says. “You can’t possibly be serious! Like I would _ever_ —”

Her dad cuts her off by patting her cheek. “Oh, come on, Ponine, don’t take it so seriously.”

She swings her arm back to slap him across the face because _how dare he_ but Combeferre catches her wrist.

“They’re not worth it, Eponine,” he says.

Her mother turns her attention on Combeferre, no doubt taking in the quality of his clothes and the way he carries himself. “And who’s this?” she asks.

“You keep away from him,” Eponine says, jerking her wrist out of Combeferre’s grip and putting herself between her boyfriend and her mother. She knows her parents aren’t much on fidelity and while she knows Combeferre can take care of himself, she doesn’t want her mother getting any ideas.

“Oh darling,” she says, “trying to marry up, are you? I suppose his clothes are rich enough, but you’d be much better off with one of those boys from inside. Lawyers make such good money—and they’re usually not so uptight as this one either.”

“I’m not interested in your advice,” she says.

“Well, you could certainly use it! You’re not going to keep his attention if you keep dressing like a frumpy librarian.” She looks back at Combeferre. “Although I suppose maybe he’s into that.”

“Leave,” she says. “Now.”

Her mother laughs. “Now, now. No need to get your panties in a twist. We were on our way out before you interrupted us.”

She watches them leave and she’s vaguely aware that she’s shaking. Combeferre wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. She has no idea how he can even stand to touch her after seeing her what her parents are like.

As her parents are pulling out of the parking lot, her siblings and Enjolras and Courfeyrac meet them outside.

“What’d they want?” Azelma says quietly. “We’re not going back with them, are we?”

"Over my dead body,” Eponine says, pulling away from Combeferre. “I can’t fucking believe—”

“I can believe it,” Gav said. “Dad told me before Thanksgiving that his usual tricks always went better when I was around. They’ve gotta be pissed about losing all that money.”

“Well, you’re not going back to him,” Eponine says. “Either of you.”

“Eponine, you’re shaking,” Azelma says. “And…are you crying?”

“I don’t cry.”

“Well then your eyes are leaking,” Gavroche says. “Maybe you should get your little doctor friend to take a look at it?”

“Fucking hell, Gav, can you not? For one fucking second can you just keep your fucking mouth shut, you little shit?”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she feels sick because that is how her parents have always talked to her and her siblings and she swore a long time ago that she would never talk to either of them in that voice, but she’s just so worked up. She lost control.

“Shit, Gav, I didn’t—”

Combeferre puts a hand on her shoulder and she feels her face heat and she really can’t pretend that she’s not crying at this point. Of course Ferre would hear her say that. Shit shit shit. When she turns to look at him, though, she doesn’t see judgment and condemnation. Just an infinite source of patience and concern. Behind him, Enjolras and Courfeyrac look just as concerned.

“Let’s go for a drive,” he says. “I think you could use a time out.”

“I’m not—I can’t—I’ve got to get them home,” she says, gesturing to her siblings. “I’ve got to—”

“They can come back to our place,” Courfeyrac says, maneuvering himself down the icy front steps on crutches while Enjolras follows behind, looking ready to catch him if he slips and falls. “The little runt owes me a game of Super Smash Brothers anyway,” he adds, reaching out to ruffle Gavroche’s hair.

Gavroche slaps his hand away. “Just because you’re a cripple doesn’t mean I won’t hit you.”

Courferyac just chuckles.

“Come on,” Combeferre says gently. “Let’s just get away for a bit. Just the two of us. Courfeyrac and Enjolras can watch your siblings for a bit.”

“Go,” Azelma says. “You deserve a break.”

She’s practically sobbing—why can’t she keep her fucking emotions in check?—but she lets Combeferre wrap an arm around her shoulders and steer her towards his car.

He opens the passenger side door for her before hurrying around to climb in and start the car. “There are tissues in the glove compartment,” he says, turning the radio station to something soothing.

He pulls out of the parking lot and expertly navigates back roads and traffic until they’re a secluded area with little traffic and he can just drive without stopping. For a few minutes, she thinks he’s driving her back to his parents’ place, but he turns the car at random and doesn’t seem to have a clear destination in mind. He doesn’t say anything, but he rests her right hand on her leg as he drives. A silent comfort.

Once she’s calmed down long enough, he asks, “So, those were your parents?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want to claim any relationship with them. I can’t—shit, Ferre, I can’t do this. I can’t put up with them. I want nothing to do with them.”

She doesn’t look at Combeferre as he purges herself of the pain her parents have caused her. They’re awful, manipulative people. They weren’t physically abusive—not like Grantaire’s dad was, at any rate—but they’re no less awful. She tells him how her mom raised her to think that her body was her most valuable asset and that her best bet in life would be prostitution. She talks about how pissed her dad was at her when she broke up with Montparnasse when she was fourteen. He didn’t care that Montparnasse had hit her, he was just pissed that Montparnasse refused to sell drugs to anyone in the family because he was a petty fucker like that. Her dad had gone so far as to ask what she’d done to provoke Montparnasse into hitting her in the first place. He had wanted her to apologize for him.

She tells him about the fears she has for her siblings. She knows her dad has been pressuring Azelma to sleep with people staying at the motel. Azelma hasn’t said as much, but Gavroche practically has and Eponine sees the way her sister avoids letting any of Eponine’s male friends do any sorts of favors for her, as though she’s afraid of what they might ask for in return. And Gavroche—he’s too clever for his own good. Too curious and too witty. Teachers think he’s too much trouble and he finds school too boring so he skips class all the time—and with that free time, it’s no wonder he finds himself in more trouble. She’s terrified he’s going to end up in juvie, because if he ends up in juvie then he’s going to piss off some guard and probably get himself killed.

“I’m sick off all this, Ferre. I used to think that I didn’t have it so bad because I grew up with R and his dad was a fucking monster, but just because they didn’t hit me doesn’t make them any less of monsters.” Angry, she wipes the tears off her face. She can’t seem to stop crying and she hates herself a little for it. “Sorry I can’t stop crying. I’m not normally like this, I swear. I haven’t cried like this ever.

“It’s okay to cry,” Combeferre says.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s fucking not. My mom always used crying as a way to trick people into do what she wanted and I always feel like I’m somehow manipulating people the same way when I cry, even if I don’t mean to, and I love you, okay? I fucking love you and the idea of manipulating you like that makes me sick and the idea that I’m just going to turn into my mother gives me nightmares because you deserve so much more than that, okay? So I’m sorry. I’m not trying to—I’m just so sick of all of this. I’ve been so worried about my siblings and Grantaire and his stupid drinking problem and then there was that whole mess with Jehan and Montparnasse and we all know that’s not over yet and you’ve just been so amazing through everything and so patient and I feel safe with you in a way I’ve never felt with anyone before and I’m so fucking petrified that I’m just going to scare you off because I normally don’t act like this and I’m sorry, okay?”

Combeferre pulls off to the side of the road and puts the car in park. “You don’t have to apologize,” he says. When she looks up at him, he’s smiling.

“Why are you smiling?” she says. “I’m bawling my fucking eyes out over here and you’re smiling!”

He tries to school his face into a sober expression, but fails. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry. You just…you said that you love me.”

“Shit, I did?”

“You don’t need to sound so alarmed,” he says, laughing. He takes her face in his hands. “I love you—all of you. Even the parts of you that cry in my car because your parents are awful people. And they are awful people, Eponine. I don’t think I really understood that until today and I think I might be even more in love with you knowing that you’re the woman you are in spite of all the shit you grew up with. You are so strong, Eponine, and having a little break down in my car doesn’t change that. I still love you.”

Eponine swallows thickly. “So we love each other, is that right?”

“I think so,” Combeferre says. He’s smiling her favorite dorky smile.

“I think I can get used to that,” she says.

Combeferre leans in for a kiss and by the time they’re done he turns the car back on, Eponine is starting to feel like maybe there’s still hope for her and her siblings after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. First of all, thank you all soooooo much for the overwhelming response to last week's chapter. I really wasn't expecting that at all, but it filled me with warm happy feels. You guys are the best.
> 
> On a less happy note, as of right now, there's a good chance that my posting will be sporadic this month. My brain has become a very inhospitable place for me to be for the last two weeks and it seems to be getting worse instead of better and that's making it very difficult for me to get anything done at all. I'm trying just to slow things down and take each day as it comes and some days are easier than others--so there's a chance that I'll be able to work on the next chapter in time--but I just wanted to let you guys know that probably for all of August, my posting schedule will be kind of hit and miss.
> 
> Seriously, though, you're all wonderful and your comments/kudos/general support have been so good for me these last few weeks. Thank you all so so so much.
> 
> (I don't know when the next chapter will be up, but for the sake of those of you who aren't subscribed, when I _do_ post, it will either be on a Tuesday or a Friday, like always, so if you check back at the end of the day on either of those days, you'll be able to see if I posted or not.)


	64. Chapter Sixty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Montparnasse makes an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for unwanted touching and kissing and for panic attacks

It’s a month after Jehan has left Mont that he really starts to feel like a person again. It comes slowly, but every day is a little easier, a little brighter. Two weeks after getting attacked by Gueulemer on Mont’s orders, the bruises have faded almost entirely and his nose, which is crooked in a way it didn’t used to be, is the only testament on his body of what happened. Living with Bahorel, his life falls into an easy pattern of class and homework and spending time with his friends. He goes running with Bahorel and Feuilly in the morning, taking pleasure in the strength of his body which he’d almost forgotten he had. He thrives in his classes and shares lunch with Grantaire or Courfeyrac or any of their other friends. In the evening, Bahorel grants him free reign of the kitchen to cook and experiment as he pleases, and at night, he writes like a man possessed, words spilling from his mind fast enough this his fingers can’t always quite keep up. He laughs easier than he has in months. He feels filled in and rounded out. He’s not a shell anymore.

He feels more like a person, but things aren’t perfect, nor is he completely better. He knows that. He has trouble sleeping—trouble falling asleep and trouble with nightmares when he does manage to drift off. It’s part of why he likes his morning runs with Bahorel and Feuilly because expending more energy throughout the day means a higher chance of being able to fall asleep at night. A few days ago on campus, he saw someone who he thought was Gueulemer and hid in a bathroom for an hour with anxiety clawing its way through his body until Grantaire came looking for him. He knows he flinches at sudden noises and sudden movements though he always pretends he doesn’t and sometimes he can’t stand to have anyone touch him at all. He still gets the odd phone call or text message or email from Mont, and when those messages are benign, he misses his ex-boyfriend and savors the messages as tokens of what their relationship once was. But more often than not, the messages and emails are harsh and cruel and sometimes threatening, and when he sees those he usually wants to curl up against Courfeyrac and pretend that none of this ever happened in the first place.

So yes, he has his good nights and his better days, but some days are bad. Some days are still hard.

The Saturday after Valentine’s Day is one of those bad days. He’s not sure if his sleepless night had anything to do with Valentine’s Day and the memories of Mont—both good and bad—that came with it, but he couldn’t sleep and when he tried to write everything felt cheap and stilted and in the end, he spent most of the night pacing around the apartment in the dark.

Bahorel finds him in the morning, sitting at the kitchen table with the largest mug he could find filled with coffee. Bahorel’s dressed for running, whereas Jehan is still in his pajamas with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a literature anthology open in front of him.

“I’m going to take a shot in the dark here,” Bahorel says, opening the fridge to get a bottle of water, “but you’re not running with us this morning, are you?”

Jehan shakes his head. “Couldn’t sleep,” he says. “Have a headache. Running sounds like death.”

“You’ve almost got a haiku there. Keep working at it.”

“There’s a lot more to haikus than the syllable count,” Jehan says. “It’s a common misconception. Besides, the syllable count was all off anyway.”

“Well, I was planning to head up to campus after the run, so the apartment will be deserted for a bit. You should try and get some sleep if you can manage it.”

“My sleep schedule is screwed up enough,” Jehan says. “I don’t want to risk making it worse by sleeping all day.”

Bahorel leaves to meet up with Feuilly with the suggestion that Jehan take it easy today. Bahorel is a bit better than some of Jehan’s other friends about hovering and coddling—simply put, Bahorel is more the sort to tough something out than to want to be coddled over it and treats his friends to similar courtesy—but he is prone to giving suggestions that sound like orders and Jehan bristles at being told what to do.

The stubborn, unreasonable part of himself wants to deliberately push himself today, to _not_ take it easy simply because he was told to, but he really doesn’t have the energy for that sort of rebellion. Last night’s melancholy still clings to his skin. It’s the sort of mood that encourages laying on the couch and marathoning entire seasons of shows on Netflix and not showering and not eating. Not living, just existing.

And as tempting as that sounds, he doesn’t allow himself to succumb to it. It’ll feel like pulling teeth in the beginning, but he knows from experience that the fastest way to shake this sort of mood is to push himself through it. Maybe he’ll go for a walk in the park. It’s February and it’s freezing outside, but there’s a certain sort of beauty in the barrenness of winter that he’s always been fond of. Or maybe he’ll go over to Grantaire’s and they’ll talk about art and poetry and existentialism and Grantaire will be able to tell the sort of mood he’s in just by looking at him and he’ll make the most ridiculous arguments in defense of art movements that they both detest just to get Jehan to smile and argue more passionately against them. Or maybe he’ll call Courfeyrac and they’ll make plans to get together later today. Courfeyrac is still on crutches and painkillers and Jehan knows how frustrated he is with his limited mobility. He puts on a good show for their friends—he laughs and smiles and jokes with the same fervor he always has—but when he thinks no one is looking, his mask slips and Jehan can see the pain and frustration clearly on his face. Courfeyrac deserves whatever cheer Jehan can bring him.

And that decides the matter. He forces himself to take a shower and listens to Shane Koyczan’s “Instructions for a Bad Day” as he gets dressed. He wears comfort clothes—his oldest, softest pair of jeans and an oversized sweater, fraying at the cuffs and collar, that Grantaire always described as being the color of puked-up green beans. He towel dries his hair but doesn’t make the effort to braid it or tie it back. He makes himself a to-do list—eat something healthy today, smile at stranger, make Courfeyrac laugh, appreciate something beautiful—takes three deep breaths to center himself, and he heads out the door.

In an effort to check “eat something healthy” off his to-do list, he heads to the whole foods place that’s just a few blocks up from the Musain. Cosette had told him about some vegetarian dishes she’d found on Pinterest that he’s eager to try and he thinks he can remember the ingredients for most of them off the top of his head.

For all it’s mid-morning on a Saturday, the grocery store is oddly deserted while Jehan peruses the shelves. He only sees one or two other shoppers and he wonders if the cold made people want to stay inside for the day. It’s weird to be in an empty store like this and Jehan thinks it’s a combination of his melancholy mood and the lingering sense of paranoia he’s had since he and Courfeyrac were attacked that makes him feel so unsettled.

While he walks over to the produce section, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and calls Courfeyrac.

“What’s cooking, good looking?” Courfeyrac asks he answers the phone and Jehan can feel himself blushing in spite of himself. Despite the fact that they’re not dating, Courf has been physical and affectionate and flirty with him. They try to spend a lot of their free time together, and even cheesy and corny things like this make Jehan’s heart flutter.

“I was calling to see if you wanted to get lunch together this afternoon,” he says, inspecting an eggplant. “Maybe in an hour or so? Or if you’re not feeling up to leaving the apartment, I’m at that whole foods place up the street from the Musain right now. I could pick something up for me to cook over at your place if you want.”

“Whole foods?” Courfeyrac says. “You’ve been talking to Joly, haven’t you? He’s been trying to get all of us to eat organic, but I’ll keep my processed foods and refined sugars, thank you very much.”

“Organic food is really good,” Jehan says, laughing a little. He loves how easily he laughs with Courfeyrac.

“For rabbits, maybe. Besides, I can’t do lunch today.”

“What? Why not?” He feels a little foolish at the disappointment he feels. He’d been looking forward to seeing Courfeyrac but he doesn’t want to feel like he’s too dependent on Courfeyrac, doesn’t want to tie his happiness to one person again.

“I’ve got a check-up with the doctor for my knee.”

“Damn,” he says.

“I’d reschedule, but if I want to keep my prescription for painkillers, I need to go today.”

“No, no,” Jehan says. “Of course you should go to the doctor’s.” He pins his phone between his ear and his shoulder as he puts the eggplant back and picks up a green pepper to inspect. “You’re not starting physical therapy, are you?”

“The knee’s not strong enough for it yet, so I think I’m just coming in for an X-ray or some sort of scan or something.”

“Well, if you’re feeling up to it afterwards, I’d love to get dinner with you tonight,” he says. “Or I can cook for us, if you’d rather stay in.”

“You’re perfect,” Courfeyrac says. “Did you know that?”

“I’m hardly perfect.”

“You’re hardly a good judge of the situation,” he says.

“You’re no more impartial than I am.”

“Touché,” he says. “How about we plan on doing dinner at that soup and sandwich place that I like—my treat, of course—but if I’m feeling too infirm to go out, you can come over and cook or we can order take-out and we can watch that movie about Keats that you’ve been telling me about. What do you think?”

“I think you’re wonderful,” he says. “That sounds wonderful.”

“Anyway, I need to shower before this appointment, so I’ll leave you to your gross shopping—”

“It’s not gross.”

Courfeyrac laughs. “And I’ll text you later this afternoon about tonight, all right?”

“Sounds great.”

He hangs up his phone and slips it back into his pocket and tosses a couple of green peppers in his basket. It’s not vegetarian, but he knows a great stuffed pepper recipe that he can make for lunch and have enough left over that Bahorel can have some for dinner if he wants. He wanders through the eerily-empty aisles looking for the rest of the ingredients he’ll need, thinking of how he’s supposed to occupy his time until he can meet Courfeyrac for dinner tonight.

He’s comparing two different brands of organic tomato sauce when he feels someone behind him.

“I’ve missed the way your hair smells.”

Jehan freezes, his heart feeling as though it launched up to somewhere near his throat. He doesn’t turn around. Maybe if he doesn’t move, Mont will just move on.

He feels fingers thread through his hair. Fuck. Shit. Of course Mont didn’t move on. He’s not a t-rex. He’s not just going to forget that Jehan’s there because he’s not moving.

“Don’t touch me,” he says. He strives for a firm, even-keeled voice, but he settles for not stuttering.

Mont ignores him, his hands still in his hair. “Of all the shit to miss about you, I miss the way your fucking hair smells.” He steps closer until he’s practically pressed flush against Jehan’s back. He takes a deep breath. He settles a hand on Jehan’s hip.

“I said not to t-t-touch me.”

“I still find strands of your hair everywhere, bird. In the bathroom, in our bed, on the couch. It’s all over our apartment.”

Jehan spins around and tries to take a few steps back, but somehow just ends up pinned between a shelf of tomato sauces and Mont. “It was never _our_ apartment,” he says. “It was always just yours.”

Mont raises a hand, cupping Jehan’s cheek. “You’re mine too,” he says.

He tries to shove Mont back a step, but Mont doesn’t budge. “I’m not yours anymore,” he says. His heart pounds frantically against his chest and his lungs feel far too tight. “We’re through, Mont. I don’t know how to make that more clear to you.”

Mont just laughs at him. His hand caresses Jehan’s cheek before sliding down to the side of his neck. Jehan feels sick remembering all the times that gentle caress turned into a violent chokehold. “You’re mine till I’m done with you, bird, and—”

“Don’t,” Jehan snaps, shoving his hand away. “Don’t touch me. Don’t call me bird. Get the hell away from me.”

“There’s that fighting spirit. The spark went missing for a while.”

“Maybe that’s because you did your best to beat it out of me,” he says.

“A mistake, Jehan.”

“Was it a mistake sending your fucking little playmates after me?” He glances up the aisle, hoping someone will come or that he’ll see a way out. As it is, Mont is standing far too close for him to make a quick escape.

“I did nothing of the sort.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he says. “Gueulemer as good as told me that you ordered him to _rape_ me.”

“He was never going to rape you.”

“Oh yeah? Because he seemed pretty sure of himself when he was shoving his fingers down my throat and telling me to ‘slick ‘em good.’ Babet and Claquesous could have killed Cou—they could have killed my friend.” He censors himself at the last moment, not wanting to mention Courfeyrac’s name to Mont in the off-chance that he’s forgotten it.

“Stop being so dramatic. No one was going to kill anyone—and if you were really that upset about it, you would have reported them. I may have asked my friends to give you a good reminder of the protection you had with me, but you’re the one who let them go free.”

“What?”

“Oh, come on, Jehan. If you really didn’t want me around, you could have had my friends in prison for assault by now and I know you know enough dirt on me to get me locked away.”

“That—that’s not—”

“Not what, Jehan? From where I stand, if you really cared so much about yourself and your little friend, you’d have done whatever you could to keep it from happening again. But you didn’t. Because you still love me.”

“I don’t—”

Mont cuts him off with a kiss that’s one part possessive, one part angry, and one part desperate. Jehan yelps and Mont takes the opportunity to force his tongue into Jehan’s mouth. Jehan nearly chokes on it and he struggles to shove Mont away from him. Mont catches his wrist when Jehan tries to claw at his face and forces it away from his face. When he pulls back from the kiss with a self-satisfied smirk on his face, Jehan gasps for breath.

“Keep the fuck away from me, Mont,” he says breathlessly, twisting his wrist out of Mont’s grip.

“I want you back, bird.”

“I’m not—we’re through. We’re done. We’re over and I’m never going back.”

Mont’s eyes grow cold. “You’ll come back to me,” he says. “One way the other, you’ll come crawling back to me eventually. Just keep in mind that I might not be so gracious when you do.”

With that, Mont pulls back and walks away.

For a long moment, Jehan can’t move, can’t think. He can barely breathe. But Mont is gone and once Jehan is certain he’s not coming back, he abandons his shopping and practically runs out of the store. He has to get out. He has to get away. He has to find somewhere safe. Anywhere safe. The Musain. It’s only a block or two away. He just needs to get to the Musain. It doesn't matter that Mont knows he frequents the café. At least one of his friends will be there, and if not, he knows pretty much all the employees there by now. They’d let him hide out in the break room if Mont came looking for him. Bile rises up in his throat as he runs, pushing past people on the street, ignoring their indignant shouts. He can’t stop to throw up, not until he’s safe.

He’s not safe in the street.

He bursts into the Musain and heads straight for the bathrooms, catching a brief glimpse of Joly and Bossuet at their usual table in the back as he passes. He falls to his knees in front of a toilet and feels grateful for a brief moment that the bathrooms are so clean before he’s thoroughly and violently sick into the toilet.

The bathroom door opens a moment later and for a second Jehan’s lung freeze up because what if it’s Mont, but it’s not. Far from it.

“Jehan?” Joly asks. “Are you okay?”

Jehan groans a little before vomiting again.

“There’s a strain of the flu going around,” Joly says, crouching down next to him in the stall and pressing a cool hand against his forehead, but Jehan jerks back from the touch. Joly’s expression turns from concerned to steely in a matter of seconds. “What happened?”

Jehan shakes his head, not feeling steady enough to talk. He can barely breathe and he kind of wants to cry but he mostly just wants to hold it all together instead of falling apart in a public bathroom.

“Was it Montparnasse?” Joly asks. “Did he hurt you?”

“He d-didn’t hurt me.”

“But it was Montparnasse,” Joly says.

Jehan nods.

“What I can do to help you feel safe?”

“What—what are you talking about?”

Joly gives him a sad sort of smile. “I don’t know if anyone told you, but hypochondria is an anxiety disorder,” he says gently. “I can recognize a panic attack when I see one. So, what do you need? What’s going to make you feel safe right now?”

“I—” His breath hitches. Part of him wants to hide in this bathroom and never leave, but that’s not an option. “Mont—he knows I come here, he knows—I don’t want to stay.”

Joly nods. “I only live two blocks away. I know you’ve never been to my place before, but would that be okay? If not, we can call a cab, go anywhere you’ll feel safe.”

“Your place is fine,” he says. He moves to get up but Joly holds out a hand to stay him.

“Only if you’re ready,” he says. “Take your time.”

Joly waits patiently as Jehan struggles to teach his lungs how to breathe properly again. When he feels a little less like he’s going to splinter into pieces, he stands up and Joly leads him out of the bathroom. Together with Bossuet, they walk the two blocks to their apartment.

“Chetta’s home,” Bossuet says as they walk. “She worked a late shift at the Corinthe last night and we cleared out to give her some space to relax this morning, but she knows we’re coming. We texted her to let her know what happened. I hope you don’t mind.”

The apartment that Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta share with each other is smaller—smaller, even, than the apartment that Jehan had once shared with Mont. It’s a one bedroom place and the kitchen and living room flow seamlessly into one space. It’s a little cramped and Jehan can’t possibly imagine how they function without tripping over each other, but it’s also cozy and warm and well-lived in. The walls are painted with warm colors and covered with pictures and posters of movies, musicals, and bands. The furniture is mismatched, but not in an eclectic way. Just a bargain shopper sort of way.

Jehan feels himself relax as soon as the door is shut behind him. This is somewhere safe. This is a place filled with people who love each other.

“Chetta?” Bossuet calls. “We’re home!”

She comes out of the bedroom with a smile and a kiss for each of her boyfriends. “How are you feeling, Jehan?” she asks.

He knows better than to say he’s fine, even though those are the words that come immediately to mind. “B-better,” he says. “S-s-sorry to intrude.”

“Think nothing of it,” she says. “We’re happy to help. Can we get you anything? Something to eat? Something to drink?”

They don’t rush him to answer the way his dad always did when he would get anxious at home. “Uhm, maybe some tea?” he said. “If that’s not too much trouble.”

Joly, who Musichetta explains is their resident tea expert, gets to work on the tea and Musichetta and Bossuet usher him towards the couch and ask him gentle questions about what he needs and what will help him the most. He doesn’t know what to say for the most part, because for years his coping mechanism was getting high, and beyond that, he doesn’t know what’ll help him the most. Bossuet puts on a movie for them—an old VHS copy of _Star Wars: Episode IV_ which Bossuet proudly proclaims is from the 1995 video release and is therefore untainted by George Lucas’s special edition disaster—and Musichetta shows Jehan how to play a simple card game.

“The card game helps you focus on the present,” Joly explains, setting a cup of tea on the end table. “It’s the fastest thing that helps ground me when I have an anxiety attack.”

The lingering feelings of panic eventually begin to fade and Jehan can breathe easier and think clearer and he feels a little embarrassed about everything because it’s not like Mont _did_ anything. Not really. He knows it could have been worse and he can’t help but feel that he’s weak for panicking over this. When he’s calmed down enough, he tells the others what happened out of a need to purge the experience from himself.

“He didn’t hurt you?” Musichetta asks when he’s done recounting the experience. “Physically, I mean.”

He shakes his head. “Just kissed me,” he says. “And touched me like a creepy fucknut.”

Jehan pretends not to notice the look Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta exchange.

“This all does still count as an assault, you know,” Bossuet says. “If you want, you can press charges against him.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t want—I just want to forget all of this. I don’t want to drag this through the legal system. I just want it to be over.” He drags his hand through his hair and his stomach churns as thinks of the way Mont touched it at the store.

He wants it gone. All of it.

“Do any of you know how to cut hair?” he asks abruptly.

Joly and Bossuet both look to Musichetta.

“I can’t do anything fancy,” she says. “But I’ve got some scissors and some clippers.”

Bossuet smiles. “She’s very good at keeping us looking pretty.”

Jehan offers a shaky laugh. “Do you think you could cut it?” he asks, gesturing absently to his hair.

“How much do you want to take off?”

“All of it?”

She raises both eyebrows at him. “You want me to give you a buzzcut?”

“Maybe not that short,” he says, glancing around. Bossuet’s bald, so he’s no help, but Joly’s hair is a good length. Maybe a little short for his taste. “Maybe a little longer than Joly’s? Is that too much work? I just want it gone.”

“It’s not any trouble,” she says. “We can do this in the bathroom so we don’t get hair all over the carpet and my boys keep you company.” She pauses for a second, studying his hair. “I think your hair is long enough to donate. Would you like that?”

Jehan nods. He likes the idea of getting rid of his hair, now a reminder of his relationship with Mont, and giving it to someone who needs it. He likes it very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. Hello. Sorry for the delay, friends. My brain appears to have eased up on it's hostilities for the most part (and there was much rejoicing). I'm moving again this weekend and then next week I'm helping my little sister move into her first college apartment, so I'm going to guess that the odds aren't high for a chapter to be posted next Tuesday, but we could probably aim for something next Friday (August 29) and then resume normal posting in September.
> 
> Anyway, thank you all so much for your patience and your support. You're all lovely, wonderful people. Hugs all around--except for those of you who don't like hugs. You all get epic high fives. 
> 
> The next chapter will definitely be up some time in the next 10 to 14 days. In the mean time, you should all go listen to Shane Koyczan's "Instructions for a Bad Day" because it's amazing and you can listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7OGY1Jxp3o).


	65. Chapter Sixty-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some aftermath of the previous chapter

With a scowl on his face, Courfeyrac hobbles out to the lobby where Combeferre waits for him.  Courfeyrac doesn’t really know what the point of visiting the doctor is if the doctor in question isn’t going to do anything _useful_. Because instead of meeting Jehan for lunch, Courfeyrac just endured an hour and a half of waiting and being poked and prodded and scanned and generally harassed with absolutely nothing to show for this kind of torture. Combeferre, undoubtedly recognizing the sound of his crutch-impaired gait, looks up from his book.

“How’d it go?” Combeferre asks, holding out Courfeyrac’s jacket for him.

“Doctors are the devil and I hate all of them.”

“I’m just going to choose not to take offense at that,” Combeferre says evenly. “What’d the doctor say?”

“The stupid fucking doctor doesn’t think I still need my stupid fucking pain pills,” he says. “According to her, my knee is healing just fine and I should be able to manage the pain with fucking ibuprofen. Ibuprofen, Ferre! My knee’s not any less broken now than it was two weeks ago and it fucking hurts and that Vicodin was maybe the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“To be fair,” Combeferre says, “Vicodin is addictive.”

Courfeyrac gives him a dirty look as he follows him out to the car. He should have taken a cab. “Do I look like an addict to you?”

Combeferre opens the car door for him. “No, but right now you kind of sound like one.”

“I might hate you,” he grumbles, arranging himself in the car before handing his crutches off to Combeferre to put in the back seat.

When Combeferre climbs into the driver’s seat, he says, “Joly did a paper last semester about all-natural remedies for pain. I’ll text him when we get home and see if he has any recommendations. How’s your pain level now?”

Courfeyrac leans his head back against the headrest and he tries not to pout. He’s always had a low-tolerance for pain and he took his last pill this morning because he was sure that his prescription would be renewed. But it wasn’t and now the drugs are starting to wear off and he just feels miserable about it. “Bad,” he says, answering Combeferre’s question.

“I think we’ve still got that heating pad from when Enjolras hurt his back last year,” Combeferre says. “When we get home, you can settle on the couch and we’ll see if that helps at all. I’ll even let you watch those silly reality TV shows you like so much. You won’t have to move for the rest of the night.”

“That sounds—shit.”

“What?”

“I’m supposed to go out with Jehan tonight, but I can’t because of my stupid fucking knee.” He rubs his hand over his face. It’s not that big of a deal, really. He already told Jehan that there was a chance that he might not be feeling up to leaving the apartment tonight, but he really was looking forward to going out with him tonight. Just the two of them at a nice café. Living with Enjolras and Combeferre doesn’t really offer the option of extended alone-time in the apartment and it’s not like he can handle the staircase at Bahorel’s apartment complex so they can’t go hang out there. “Do you mind if he comes over tonight? We’re supposed to do dinner.”

“I’m going out with Eponine,” he says. “And I doubt Enjolras will object.”

He shimmies in his seat to fish his phone out of his pocket and he hisses when he jostles his knee and pain shoots up his leg. Trying to manage the pain without adequate painkillers is going to be awful. He tries to massage the muscle above his knee around the brace while the phone rings.

“Hey,” Jehan says when he answers the phone. “Done with your doctor’s appointment?”

“Yeah, about that. The not-so-good doctor has refused to refill my prescription and I can already start to feel my knee act up, so I don’t think we’ll be able to go out tonight. I hope that’s okay.”

“Not a problem,” Jehan says. The man is fucking saint. “I’m fine staying in if that’s better for you.”

“You can still come over and cook, if you want.”

“Actually, would you mind doing take-out? My shopping trip at the whole foods place didn’t exactly go as planned.”

“Forget your wallet? No shame. Happens to Bossuet all the time.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s…”

He hears Jehan take a deep, almost shuddering breath on the other line.

“Jehan?” he asks cautiously. His mind is racing to figure out what could make Jehan make that sound and he doesn’t like any of his options.

“I just ran into Mont while I was out,” he says quickly.

“Fuck, are you okay?”

Combeferre casts him a worried look from the driver’s seat. “Everything okay?” he asks.

“He didn’t hurt me or anything,” Jehan says. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, I just—shit, Jehan, he found you at the grocery store?”

“He’s probably still following me,” he says. “I—can we talk about this later? I’m just not…I don’t feel very stable yet.”

“Yeah, of course,” Courfeyrac says. “Are you back home now?” He feels safe with Jehan staying at Bahorel’s. He knows that Bahorel will keep the svelte poet safe.

“I’m at Joly’s place, actually.”

“Joly’s?”

“Yeah. I ran to the Musain after I ran into Mont, and he and Bossuet were there and they took me back to their place.”

“Good,” he says. Good that Jehan wasn’t alone. Good that Jehan has friends who look after him. “Good. Are you sure you’re up to coming over tonight? Because I don’t want—”

“No, no,” Jehan says. “It’s fine. I want to see you.”

Good, because he wants to see Jehan too. He wants to have Jehan safe in his arms. “Do you want to come over around dinner time, then? We can order in and just have a quiet night together.”

“That sounds perfect,” Jehan says. “I’ll see you tonight.”

When Courfeyrac hangs up his phone, he rubs his hand over his face. Fuck all of this. He doubts that he’ll feel okay until he sees Jehan tonight with his own eyes.

“Courfeyrac, what happened?” Combeferre asks. “Your hands are shaking.”

“Montparnasse cornered Jehan at the grocery store.”

“Is he hurt?”

Combeferre’s voice is steel and iron.

“Jehan said that he didn’t hurt him,” Courfeyrac says. “But he didn’t want to talk about it. He’s with Joly and Bossuet and Musichetta at their place right now.”

“They’ll look after him,” Combeferre says. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

Combeferre takes his eyes off the road just long enough to give Courfeyrac a look and Courfeyrac sighs. He’s been…jittery since the attack two weeks ago. He knows it’s a normal psychological response to worry when he doesn’t hear from Jehan—or any of this friends, for that matter—at least once a day. He knows that it’s normal for him to be having nightmares about the night he and Jehan were attacked and he knows that it’s normal that he doesn’t feel safe when he’s out at night. He knows these are practically textbook reactions to a violent assault, but he’s still not comfortable talking about them. He doesn’t like making people worry about him.

But this is Combeferre and Combeferre isn't going to let him not talk about it.

“I don’t like knowing that he’s not safe,” Courfeyrac says. “And I don’t like feeling helpless and I don’t like knowing that I wasn’t there when I should have been and I don’t think I’m going to feel okay until Montparnasse is buried at the bottom of a lake, okay?”

“You know this isn’t your fault, right?” Combeferre says. “Just because Jehan was alone when Montparnasse found him, that doesn’t mean that you should have been there or that things would have been different if you were there. Besides, Jehan said he wasn’t hurt. He’s okay.”

“There’s a difference between not being hurt and being okay.”

“You’re right,” Combeferre concedes. “But Jehan being okay isn’t necessarily anything that you have control over, Courfeyrac, and I think he knows that, but you need to know that too.”

“I do know that.”

Again, Combeferre gives him a look.

“I know I can’t fix him—I mean, he doesn’t need to be fixed because he’s kind of perfect, but all the shit he’s had to deal with—I want to make it better, I want to make it so he never has to deal with anything like that ever again, and the one time I was in a position to help him and protect him, we both landed in the hospital!”

“That attack wasn’t your fault,” Combeferre says. “You were outnumbered and you said they were armed with a baseball bat—and who knows what else. You cannot blame yourself for what happened that night.”

“I should have been able to protect him more. I should have been there for him.”

Combeferre shakes his head. “You wanted to protect him more and you wanted to be there for him, but there’s no ‘should’ in this case, Courf. You can’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. What happened has happened. You can’t change that no matter how many _should_ s you can think of. You were both victims of that attack.”

“It’s not that simple. I—”

“Do you blame Jehan for that attack?”

“What? No. Of course not.”

“Even though you were attacked by _his_ ex-boyfriend’s friends? Even though this wouldn’t have happened if Jehan had broken up with Montparnasse back when you first started showing interest in him? Or if Jehan had broken up with him after the first time Montparnasse hit him? You know, when he _should_ have dumped him. Or if—”

“This wasn’t his fault,” Courfeyrac snaps. “None of it. And just because Montparnasse is a fucking monster doesn’t meant that any of this is Jehan’s fucking fault and if you even _dare_ to say that again, so help me, Combeferre, I will—”

Combeferre reaches over and puts a hand on his shoulder, cutting off his speech. “You know I don’t really think that way,” he says. “But if none of this is Jehan’s fault, than it can’t be your fault either, Courfeyrac. This is Montparnasse’s fault. And his gang’s fault. They are to blame for all of this, not you. It’s important to me that you understand that.”

Courfeyrac stares out the window as Combeferre parallel parks outside the apartment complex. “I’ll work on it,” he says.

“That’s all I ask,” Combeferre says. “Now, let’s get you upstairs and see if there’s anything we can do about your pain.”

* * *

 

Courfeyrac spends most of the afternoon with his bad leg propped up on the couch and sipping ginger root tea, which allegedly is supposed to help with the pain.  He attempts to work on some of his school work, but, between his pain and his worry for Jehan, he doesn’t get very far in any of it and instead watches mindless TV shows and pretends that he’s not counting down the minutes until Jehan comes over.

By the evening, he’s restless and he’s glad that Combeferre and Enjolras both made plans to be elsewhere, because he’s sure his anxious agitation would bother them both.

When the doorbell rings, he hobbles to the door as fast as he can, not even bothering with his crutches and instead relying on various walls and pieces of furniture to assist his trek to the door.

And when he pulls the door open to let Jehan in, Courfeyrac feels his jaw drop.

“Your hair is gone,” he says.

Jehan self-consciously rubs a hand over his short hair. “Does it look that bad?” he asks.

“No, no. Of course it doesn’t.” And it doesn’t look bad. Not at all, really. But it’s different. So different. If anything, it brings more attention to the sharp features of Jehan’s face. The line of his cheekbones, his eyes, his jaw line. It makes Jehan look a little more masculine for certain, but he wouldn’t call that a bad thing. “It looks really good.”

“Musichetta did it for me. I needed a change.”

“Well,” Courfeyrac says, “I like it.” He pauses for a moment to study Jehan, looking for signs that the earlier altercation with Montparnasse left him more rattled than he appeared now.

As though he can read Courfeyrac’s mind, Jehan gives him a reassuring smile. “Let’s go sit down,” he says. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

He’s heard statements like that from all of his friends more times than he cares to count over the last two weeks, but it doesn’t bother him as much when it comes from Jehan and he wraps an arm around Jehan’s shoulders so he can hobble properly back to the couch. Jehan wraps an arm around his waist to keep him steady and Courfeyrac loves the way it feels.

Once they’re back on the couch, Jehan pulls Courfeyrac’s laptop onto his lap and together they search around for some place that’ll deliver food to them and they make small-talk, both of them carefully avoid mentioning what happened earlier today. It’s not until the food has been ordered and they’ve both relaxed against the couch that Courfeyrac takes Jehan’s hand and asks if he wants to talk about this morning.

“It’s not as bad as you’re thinking it is,” Jehan says. “I promise.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“He just found me in the store and he touched me and he said creepy shit and he kissed me and I panicked and ran away to the Musain.”

“He—what? He _kissed_ you?”

“It wasn’t—it’s not like I wanted him to, okay?”

“Of course not,” Courfeyrac says. “I wasn’t trying to imply—I know you want nothing to do with him. I just—kissing you like that, especially when you don’t want to be kissed, that’s kind of a big deal.”

But Jehan shakes his head. “It’s only a big deal if I let it be a big deal,” he says. “I…I overreacted. That’s all.”

“Having a panic attack because your abusive ex-boyfriend is apparently stalking you and cornered you in a grocery store and kissed you is not an overreaction.”

“But that’s just it,” Jehan says. “We were in a grocery store. It’s not like he would have really tried anything.”

Courfeyrac isn’t so sure about that. The man was willing to let his friends do who-knows-what to him and Jehan. And even before that, Montparnasse proved himself to be an abusive asshole. He can’t really give him the benefit of the doubt at this point. But it’s also clear that Jehan doesn’t want him to make a big deal out of this. So he’ll do what he can to help Jehan feel safe again, but he’s not going to force him to relive that experience over and over again if that’s not what he wants.

 “Well,” he says, “I’m glad he didn’t try anything else. Have you thought at all about getting a restraining order or something? Might save you from having to put up with that kind of shit again.”

“I don’t want to press charges,” Jehan says. “Besides, it’s not like we have any proof that he did anything to me at this point anyway.”

“I don’t think you have to press charges to get a restraining order,” Courfeyrac says, though he might be wrong. He makes a mental note to check that later. “Don’t you think having one might, I don’t know, make you feel safer?”

“Do you really think a restraining order would stop Mont? It’s not like he has much respect for the law.”

“But it would be an added layer of protection in case he did try something. It might deter him from trying anything at all.” At the very least, a restraining order would help Courfeyrac sleep better at night. He needs to know that Jehan is safe.

“I don’t know.” Jehan shrugs. “Maybe it’s because I spent the last three years spending most of my free time with a criminal, but I don’t really trust the police to be helpful—especially for someone like me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jehan just gives him a look. “I mean that people look at me and know that I’m gay—hell, from the type of slurs that I hear getting tossed around, half of those people assume that I’m trans—and while I don’t have a problem with that, I know that a lot of the Type A men that police work attracts do. It’s just not worth the hassle to me.”

Courfeyrac sighs. He’s had enough experience with the NYPD—thank you, Enjolras—to know that Jehan’s not exactly wrong about that, and if he’s uncomfortable going to the police with this, then Courfeyrac’s not going to push him. Instead, he tugs Jehan closer to him. “You’re okay now, though? I mean you feel safe and everything?”

Jehan smiles at him. It’s the same soft, warm smile that attracted Courfeyrac to Jehan in the first place. “I always feel safe with you,” he says. “My ex might be a creepy stalker now, but I know I’m safe right here.”

Courfeyrac feels unworthy of that faith. “You don’t…”

“Don’t what?” Jehan asks.

“It’s just I couldn’t protect you that night we got attacked. I don’t get how you can feel safe around me.”

Jehan pulls back, his expression troubled. “Let’s get something straight, Courfeyrac,” he says. “I don’t need people to _protect_ me.”

“I know that, I do—”

“No,” he says. “I don’t think you do. I know I’ve got a shit track record of it, but I am capable of taking care of myself. I don’t need you or anyone else to coddle me or treat me like I’m made of glass. I’m not going to break just because Mont acts like a creepy fucker, okay?”

Courfeyrac blinks, surprised at the vehemence in Jehan’s voice. He wonders how long these feelings have been festering. “Of course not,” he says. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then how did you mean it, Courf?” He doesn’t give Courfeyrac time to answer. “Because you know what the hardest part of all this shit has been? Mont used make me feel strong. He used to make me feel like I could handle anything. He knew about my stupid anxiety problems and he knew about my inability to stand up to my dad, and he made me feel like I was more than that. He didn’t let my weaknesses define me…until recently when he started doing his fucking best to make me think that’s all I had to offer. Instead of making me feel strong, he made me feel small and helpless. And on top of that, it felt like I had you and every one of our friends acting like I couldn’t deal with my relationship shit myself. It felt like everywhere I turned someone was trying to tell me what to do or trying to take care of me or trying to protect me and I just felt worthless because it seemed no one thought I could actually take care of myself.

“And you guys were worried,” he continues. “I get that. I don’t blame you for that and everyone’s been a lot better since I broke up with Mont, but I still sometimes feel like no one thinks I can take care of myself. I’ve got a lot of shit to work through, I know that, but I also need to have the autonomy to work through that and I can’t if everyone’s trying to protect me from myself! I don’t need you or anyone else trying to protect me, Courfeyrac. What I need is for you to support me while I figure this out myself!”

Jehan’s face is flushed at the end of his speech and Courfeyrac just feels sheepish. He thinks he needed to hear that as much as Jehan needed to get it off his chest.

“Are we really that bad?” he asks.

“Not all the time,” Jehan says. “And mostly, you’ve all been great and supportive and I know a lot of this is probably in my head, I just…”

“Hey,” Courfeyrac says. “You need what you need. You don’t have to justify it to me.”

“Sorry for snapping at you like that,” he says.

“Don’t. I needed to hear that. I’ve got my own shit to work through, you know.”

Jehan smiles at him again. “I meant what I said, though.”

Courfeyrac snorts. “You left no misconceptions about that, Jehan.”

“No, I mean about feeling safe with you,” he says. “And not because I think you can protect me or whatever—that’s not your job and I don’t need that from you even if it was—but because I know you’d never do anything to hurt me. I feel safe with you because I trust you and that might seem like a really small thing, but it’s something that I really appreciate right now.”

Courfeyrac hesitates for a small moment, studying Jehan carefully before leaning in for a chaste kiss. They don’t kiss often. Both of them have agreed that it feels too much like dating when they’ve decided that’s something they’d rather hold off on. But sometimes Courfeyrac can’t resist. He keeps his kisses simple and quick, but they always make Jehan smile and blush.

This time is no exception. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, folks! My life has settled and I've drafted myself a nice little writing schedule so I'm ready to go back to my once-a-week posting schedule. (Posting every two weeks just felt so looooong, but I needed the time. Alas.) Anyway, thank you all so much for your patience and support. You're all wonderful.
> 
> Next chapter should be up next Tuesday :)
> 
> PS: Good luck to everyone who's starting school (or already has started school) this week!


	66. Chapter Sixty-Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire and co confront Montparnasse and Enjolras and Grantaire take a step in the right direction

When Grantaire hears about the stunt that Montparnasse tried to pull on Jehan in the grocery store, he’s furious. Usually that sort of anger takes more energy to muster than he has to spare, but this is a special case because it’s Jehan and because Montparnasse has caused enough trouble. Despite Jehan’s many reassurances that he’s okay (“Just a little shaken, R, I swear. You don’t need to worry.”) Grantaire gets it in his head that something needs to be done.

Montparnasse needs to know once and for all that this sort of behavior is unacceptable.

At first, he entertains thoughts of all the horrendously violent (and illegal) things that he wants to do to Montparnasse, but eventually he settles on the idea of having a little “chat” with him to get the point across. He knows it’s foolish to do something like that alone, so he calls on Eponine and Bahorel for assistance. Montparnasse has always been a little afraid of Eponine and Bahorel is built like a wall and looks intimidating even if acts like teddy bear around his friends. Grantaire finds out where Montparnasse will be one day from a kid in his art class who buys weed off Montparnasse and he texts Eponine and Bahorel to meet him at the Corinth to go over ground rules before they go surprise Montparnasse.

In hindsight, he shouldn’t be as surprised as he is to see that Bahorel has brought the cavalry. Because it’s not just Bahorel and Eponine waiting for him. It’s also Feuilly and Bossuet and Joly and Musichetta (who looks more menacing than either of her boyfriends).

“Seriously?” Grantaire says to Bahorel. “I told you I wanted to keep this small!”

“This is small!” Bahorel says.

“Just be glad I didn’t tell Combeferre about this,” Eponine says. “Because if I had told him, then Enjolras and Courfeyrac would have found out, and then we would have had to stop Courfeyrac from attempting to bludgeon Montparnasse with his crutch.”

“For the record, I’m still in favor of bludgeoning,” Bahorel says.

Grantaire shakes his head. “We’re keeping this non-violent,” he says. “I just want to remind him that Jehan’s not alone and that he can’t bully him around. I’m not out to start some sort of gang war or something.”

Bossuet grins. “Does that mean we’re a gang now?”

“Yes,” Joly says.

“About time,” Bossuet says.

“So does that make us the ‘Gang of the ABC’ now?” Feuilly asks.

“Gang of the Abased sounds better,” Grantaire says. “Just everyone promise not to punch anyone, okay?”

He’s not satisfied until all of them agree.

They find Montparnasse outside a bar in a seedier part of town. Grantaire’s just glad that they find him alone.

Montparnasse shoves his hands in his pockets when he spots Eponine and Grantaire approaching. “Been a while since you’ve been around, R,” he says. “I’m not sure I can give you your old discount.”

“Cut the shit,” Eponine says. “We’re here to talk about Jehan.”

Montparnasse smirks and Grantaire regrets making this a non-violent gathering. He wants to punch the expression right off Montparnasse’s face. “And just how is my bird doing? He didn’t seem too happy to see him the other day.”

“I wonder why,” Feuilly muttered.

“That’s what we here to talk about,” Grantaire says. “Jehan dumped your ass, so be a grown up and leave him the fuck alone.”

“Did I scare him? Is that why my bird sent you and the boy scouts after me?”

“He’s not your anything, you fuckwad,” Eponine says. “And the boy scouts are here with me because you’re not the only one with friends who’re capable of doing some damage, kay? Your stunts with Jehan end now or you’re the one who’ll end up in the hospital. Do you hear me?”

“Seriously, Eponine? You think I’m afraid of this lot? Yeah, you’ve got a bit muscle behind you, but you’ve got no bite. You never have.” He turns to Grantaire. “Did Jehan really send you here to do his dirty work for him?”

“Jehan doesn’t even know we’re here,” Grantaire says. “Like always, he wants to take the high road.”

“Oh, so you’re going behind his back then?” Montparnasse says. “He’s going to love that, I’m sure. You know how he feels about people making decisions on his behalf.”

Eponine rolls her eyes. “Quit the I-know-him-so-well act, asshole,” she says. “We all know you’re the one who gets off on making decisions for him, but you know what? Jehan has made his choice and it doesn’t involve keeping you around. So stop acting like a thirteen-year-old and deal with it.”

“You fuck around with him again,” Grantaire says, “and you’re going to have us to deal with. You get it?”

“Message received,” he says, his tone suggesting he thinks this all one big joke. Still, he waits until Bahorel and Feuilly have started to walk before he says, “You know my bird’ll come back to me eventually. He won’t be able to stay away.”

“You’re delusional,” Eponine says.

Montparnasse laughs. “He’ll come back when he realizes what’s best for him. He’s a little bitch, but he’s not stupid.”

Grantaire loses all patience with Montparnasse and before he can think better of it, he punches Montparnasse hard enough that he stumbles back against the wall behind him, clutching his face.

Eponine grabs Grantaire by the arm and pulls him away before he can do anything more.

“Well, that was stupid,” she says. “What happened to wanting to keep this non-violent, hmm?”

“I couldn’t listen to that fuckwad anymore,” he says.

“Besides,” Bahorel says, “if he hadn’t punched him, I would have—and you wouldn’t have been able to stop me.”

Eponine shakes her head and mutters, “Boys,” and ushers them all off before anyone can do anything more.

* * *

 

It actually takes a few days before Jehan finds out what Grantaire and the others have done, which surprises Grantaire. He didn’t think his friends were really capable of keeping secrets and it was actually an accident that Jehan found out at all.  He figured that once Courfeyrac found out—and surely Courfeyrac would find out because Eponine told Combeferre about it (and Grantaire got lectured by both Combeferre and Enjolras about how stupid it was to confront Montparnasse at all)—then Jehan would find out. But the secret slips not with Courfeyrac but with Marius, who in typical Marius fashion didn’t realize that it was supposed to be a secret at all and mentioned it casually during a meeting. To be fair to Marius, he tried very hard to cover his tracks once he let it slip, but Jehan could be very persistent when he wanted to be and it wasn’t long until he had the full story.

Honestly, though, Grantaire thinks Jehan is handling it all rather well. Jehan’s pretty non-confrontational until something but once his temper snaps, it comes out in full-force, and Grantaire was sure that this would set off Jehan, but he’s been ranting at Grantaire about how foolish he’d been for a half-hour now and the displays of temper had been minimal.

Hell, Enjolras had been more upset when he’d found out.

“So next time you think that dealing with my ex-boyfriend is a good idea,” Jehan says, throwing himself down on the couch after pacing the length of Grantaire’s apartment for the last half-hour, “tell me about if first. Because it’s not a good idea. It’s a shit one.”

Grantaire reaches out and tousles Jehan’s hair, which is something they’ve all developed the habit of doing since Jehan cut his hair. Jehan’s hair hasn’t been this short since they were in high school, and back then Jehan had looked particularly pathetic with short hair, but it fits him now. Jehan has no idea of how to style his hair, of course, and mostly it just sort flops around, but that’s fitting too. “Trust me, I don’t plan on talking to him again,” he says. “We just wanted to be sure that he knew he couldn’t bully you around like that. You’re not alone in this.”

“He knows I’m not alone in this—or did you forget the part where he had his friends put Courf in the hospital?”

“You were in the hospital too, if I recall.”

“I wasn’t hurt nearly as bad as Courf was.”

Grantaire just gives him a look because no, Jehan’s injuries weren’t as long-lasting as Courfeyrac’s are, but not all injuries are physical.

“Shut up,” Jehan says and Grantaire laughs.

“I know you worry about us, but we worry about you too and we all thought it was best to…discourage Montparnasse before he got it in his head that accosting you in grocery stores was an acceptable thing to do.”

“I don’t need the lot of you trying to protect me.”

“Just because you don’t need to be protected doesn’t mean that your friends don’t want to protect you anyway. Deal with it.”

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he fishes it out and unlocks the screen to check the message.

**_Enjolras:_ ** _Sorry I’m running late. I’ll be there soon to talk about custody stuff, okay?_

Enjolras has been helping prepare for the custody hearing for Eponine’s siblings in a few weeks. According to both Enjolras and Courfeyrac, there’s not much Grantaire could do to screw this up at this point, but Grantaire’s not so sure about that. He’s not used to things going his way and while his brain’s been better behaved now that he’s cut back on his drinking, he knows that’s not enough to suspect that his luck will suddenly turn. Enjolras reassures him a lot that he won’t muck up the hearing and he appreciates that.

“Is that Enjolras?” Jehan asks as Grantaire types out his reply.

“No.”

“You’ve got that goofy little grin on your face that you always get when Enjolras texts you.”

Grantaire sobers his expression. “No I don’t.”

When he looks up, Jehan is smirking. “He’s been texting you a lot,” he says.

“He’s preparing me for that custody thing for Gavroche and Azelma.”

“And that means you two have been spending a lot of time alone together.”

“What are you getting at, Jehan?”

“You know exactly what I’m getting at,” he says. “You’ve been in love with Enjolras for ages. It’s nice to see things working out in your favor.”

“Nothing’s working out in anyone’s favor,” Grantaire says. And it’s not. He doesn’t have any misconceptions about that. He knows his relationship—his friendship—with Enjolras is better now than he ever hoped it could be, but that’s all it is. Friendship. And they’re not even particularly close friends—not the way Enjolras is with Combeferre and Courfeyrac or the way Grantaire is with Jehan. And that’s okay. He’s content with the scraps of attention and affection he gets from Enjolras. He’s not greedy. He doesn’t need anything more, no matter how much his heart stutters when Enjolras looks at him or touches him.

“Uh huh,” Jehan says. “I think Enjolras is kind of inexperienced in matters of the heart. Maybe he just needs you to take the first step.”

“No one’s taking first steps,” he says. “There are no first steps to be taking.”

“Oh yeah? Is that why your bickering sounds remarkably like flirting?”

“We’re not flirting.” Before Jehan can come up with a rebuttal, he turns the tables. “What about you and Courf, then?”

“What about me and Courf?”

“You two are certainly dancing around each other,” he says. “Joly spotted the two of you holding hands the other day and Eponine saw you two kiss one time in Combeferre’s apartment, but you won’t say you’re dating.”

“We’re waiting,” he says. “Until some of this whole mess blows over. It’s safer that way.”

“And in the meantime, what? You’re fuck-buddies?”

Jehan huffs at him. “For your information, we’re not,” he says. “Not that it’s any of your business if we were. We’re friends—good friends—”

“Good friends who want to fuck.”

“And that’s what we’ve both agreed on and anything more than that isn’t your business.”

There’s a knock on the door before it opens and Enjolras lets himself in. It seems Enjolras finally figured out what an “open door policy” actually means. He’s on the phone when he steps in and he waves hello to Jehan and Grantaire before pointing to his phone and mouthing the word _important_.

“I’ll just leave you to your not-flirting,” Jehan says with a smirk. He grabs his coat off the back of the couch and he lets himself out.

With Jehan gone, Grantaire has nothing to distract him from Enjolras. He knows his opinion on Enjolras is far from partial, but he thinks Enjolras looks particularly radiant today. There’s always a sort of light about him, but it seems brighter today and it takes Grantaire a while to realize the cause of it.

Enjolras is smiling. A full, broad smile, showing off spectacularly white teeth. Grantaire wonders what’s happened to make Enjolras smile like this. Because he’s seen Enjolras smile before, and usually it’s a sedate expression for him. His smile has never been this bright before.

“Yes, of course,” Enjolras says to the person on the phone. “I’ll be sure to tell him…Of course…thank you very much.”

When Enjolras hangs up, he laughs and Grantaire couldn’t pull his attention away even if he wanted to.

“Grantaire, you have—you have no idea!”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he says. “What’s going on?”

“Lamarque and I met with the college board about the housing issue for trans students this morning,” he says. “And they’re still not willing to budge on the on-campus housing issue—which don’t get me started on that because they’re being deliberately obtuse about this—but they’re going to allot funding for unisex bathrooms! All across campus, not just in one or two buildings! And then—” He has to take a deep breath to keep going and his smile just keeps bigger. Grantaire is sure his cheeks have to hurt by now. “And then I just got off the phone with the police commissioner. It’s Courf’s letter-writing campaign! They’re sick of the letters they’ve been getting and he called to let me know they’re assigning two officers to the case about the sex workers just to get us to stop with the letters! People are _listening_ , Grantaire! They’re actually listening!”

For a moment, Grantaire is speechless. He’s never seen Enjolras quite like this before and he can feel his heart pounding against his chest. He wants to congratulate Enjolras. He wants to hug him and he moves closer before he realizes that he’s never really hugged Enjolras before—nor has he even seen anyone other than Courfeyrac hug Enjolras before—and he doesn’t know what to do and he can’t think straight because his heart is pounding so loud—surely Enjolras must hear it—but then Enjolras closes the distance between them and Enjolras is—

Enjolras is kissing him. Actually kissing him. Lips against lips. And somewhere in his brain he’s aware that Enjolras is gripping his arms tightly—maybe even tight enough to bruise—but he doesn’t care because Enjolras _is kissing him_. And he doesn’t care that Enjolras has no idea what he’s doing because Enjolras is _kissing_ him and he sinks into it, sinks against Enjolras, because this is what he’s wanted for ages and it’s better than he could have ever imagined because this is _real_ and he loses himself.

And then he remembers himself. And he remembers that there’s no way this can really be real. And he remembers that it’s not possible for Enjolras to be kissing him—not in earnest, at least. This…this has to be some sort of trick. Some sort of game. Enjolras can’t. He can’t be kissing him. He can’t be doing this to Grantaire. This can’t be real, so it must be fake and Enjolras must be toying with him.

He breaks the kiss, feeling his own heart break a little because even if it was a fake kiss, it was still a kiss. It still has to count for something. Grantaire wipes his hand over his mouth, trying to erase the sensation of the kiss. Trying to forget it. He can’t bear to look at Enjolras, so he focuses his attention to the bookshelf behind him. He takes a shuddering breath.

“What the hell was that?” he demands.

He braces himself for Enjolras’s answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being wonderful and for all your support and kudos-ing and comment-ing. You're all the best. (I'd wax more poetic about how awesome you are, but there's this amazing thunderstorm happening right now that I want to go enjoy!)
> 
> Next update should be on Tuesday.


	67. Chapter Sixty-Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras and Grantaire talk about their feelings

Enjolras watches Grantaire wipe his hand over his mouth. “What the hell was that?” he demands.

Shit. Did he entirely misread this? It wasn’t like he exactly _planned_ to do this and that’s probably the problem because he rarely does things without some sort of plan. Well, he sort of had been planning to do this. Ever since his talk with Courfeyrac, he’s been trying to sort out the nature of his feelings for Grantaire and he’d thought about kissing him, he just hadn’t intended on doing anything right this moment.

Still, Grantaire is waiting for an answer.

“I thought that was a kiss,” he says.

“Oh, is that what that was?” Grantaire says. His voice drips with acid that Enjorlas hasn’t heard in months. “I had no idea that’s what a fucking kiss was.”

There’s only one way he knows to react to that tone. He snaps back. “If you knew, then why did you ask?”

“Because you can’t just go around kissing people! Why the fuck would you do something like that?”

“Because Courfeyrac told me you liked me!” he snaps. “I don’t get why you’re yelling at me!”

Grantaire’s face flushes like he’s terribly embarrassed. “So what? Courfeyrac dared you to kiss me? That’s all this is?”

“What? No—”

“Well, news flash, Enjolras, kissing people isn’t some sort of game! You can’t just toy with people like this!”

“Toy with—what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you! You kissing me! Because I have no fucking idea what you’re playing at, but that—that wasn’t cool and that wasn’t okay and that wasn’t—”

“I wasn’t playing at anything!”

“—and for fuck’s sake, Enjolras, I thought you’d know better!”

Enjolras drags his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, okay?”

“Well that much is obvious!”

“Then why don’t you stop yelling at me and tell me what the hell this is all about!”

“What’s going on,” Grantaire says, his voice is low and filled with something that sounds alarmingly like pain and anger, “is that you shouldn’t kiss people when you don’t have any feelings for them. You especially shouldn’t kiss people you don’t have feelings for when you know that that person does have feelings for _you_ , okay? Do you get it yet? Because I was fine harboring my little crush in secret. I didn’t expect anything from you. I didn’t want anything from you! But you just waltz in here with your fucking smile and your fucking confidence and your _fucking kisses_ and did you even stop to think what that would do to me? I could be okay with you being this untouchable god, but you cannot do this to me. You cannot kiss me and make me think that something’s changed when I know that nothing has. You can’t give me that hope and yank it away because it fucking _hurts_ , Enjolras, and shit, I just want to drink until I forget all of this!”

“No, no, no,” Enjolras says quickly, feeling more than a little horrified at everything that Grantaire has just said. “No, Grantaire, you’ve got it all wrong.”

“Oh, great, yes,” Grantaire says. “Please. Tell me how I’m fucking this up, too. It’s been too long since you’ve last raked me over the coals for something. Let’s have it, then.”

“Grantaire, I’m not—I wasn’t—this wasn’t some game to me,” he says, frantically trying to find the right words to explain this. The last thing he wants is for Grantaire to think that he’s using him or toying with him. He doesn’t want this to be such a disaster that Grantaire is driven to drink over it. “I wasn’t kissing you because it was a trick or a dare or any of that shit. I’m not—I wouldn’t do that to you, okay? No matter what else you think about me, I would like to think that you don’t think I go around forcing kisses on people who don’t want them. I just—I like you, okay? Really like you. _Like_ like you.” Shit, he sounds like an idiot. “And I’ve never done this before and I really don’t know what I’m doing—I wasn’t lying about that—and you’ve got to know how much not having a plan terrifies me, but all I know is that I like you and that you’re almost always on my mind and that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how much I want to kiss you for _months_ , Grantaire. Months! Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? And I don’t normally do things like this. I don’t know what the protocol for this is, okay? I’ve never done this before, I’ve never even kissed anyone before, but I did because I like you and I wanted you to know!”

Grantaire stares at him like he’s entirely unsure of what he’s seeing and Enjolras wants to explain himself, but he doesn’t know what else to say.

“You—you like me?” Grantaire says.

“Yes, I do.”

“But… _why_?”

“What?”

“You’ve never shown so much as a fraction of romantic interest in anyone before, and all of a sudden I’m supposed to believe that you’re doing all of this because you’ve got a crush on me of all people? Sorry not sorry, but I’m not what anyone has ever considered to be relationship material.”

Enjorlas scoffs. “I’m sure plenty of people have thought you’ve been relationship material, you’ve just been too blind to see it!”

“I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

“You’re a terrible judge of your own character,” Enjolras says. “And at first, I was too, but I know you better than that now. I know that you’re not just a drinking problem with an obnoxious sense of humor, and I know I was kind of an ass to you in the beginning, but I didn’t understand you back then.”

“And you understand me now?”

“Yeah, I think I do,” he says. “I doubt you’re going to believe me, but you’re wonderful, Grantaire. You play yourself off as a cynic, but there’s so much more to you than that. You only have to look at the way you treat your friends to know that. No matter how much you try to pretend, you do care—maybe not about causes but certainly about people, because I’ve seen the support you’ve been to Jehan over the last few months and I’ve seen you with Eponine and her siblings and I know you’d do anything for any of them. You connect with people far easier than I’ve ever been able to and you have no idea how much I respect and envy that and don’t even get me started on how much I admire the way your mind works because the way you see things is absolutely fascinating and—and you’re staring at me. You always do this. Why are you staring at me?”

“I think I want to kiss you,” Grantaire says.

“Please.”

This time Grantaire closes the distance between them and Enjolras doesn’t have the time to worry about how to tilt his head or where to put his hands or how close he’s supposed to stand because Grantaire takes control. He takes the lead, pulling Enjolras close to him and moving in for the kiss. Enjolras didn’t know that it could feel this nice standing close to someone. He didn’t know that it could feel so nice to have someone’s lips moving against his. He didn’t know that he and Grantaire could fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

And he likes it. It makes him feel a little giddy and a little light-headed, but he likes it. Until now, he wasn’t sure if he would.

When Grantaire pulls back, Enjolras blinks at him.

“So, now what?” Grantaire asks.

“What?”

“Now what?” Grantaire says again. “Are we…are we dating? Do you want to be dating? Or are we just casual kissing buddies now? What’s your endgame, Enjolras?”

“I…I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he says.

Grantaire laughs. “Shit, you’re cute,” he says and Enjolras can feel himself blush. “You really haven’t done any of this before, have you?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Maybe we should go on a date?” Grantaire suggests. He sounds uncertain, like he’s still not sure this is actually happening.

“Yes,” Enjolras says. He tries to be firm so Grantaire knows he’s serious. “Yes. A date. We should do that.”

“You’re the one with the busy schedule. I can be free whenever. Seriously. Whenever. Name the time and place and I’ll be there. When are you free?”

Enjolras pulls out his phone to check his calendar. He’s got meetings and tests and classes this entire week and even through the weekend. He frowns. Weekends are for dating. He knows that much. He should have cleared his schedule before he got into all of this. He swipes his calendar to see if March is any clearer. “March 8?” he asks, looking up. “I know that’s nearly two weeks from now, but it’s the first night I’ve got off.”

Grantaire groans. “March 8 is Jehan’s birthday,” he says. “Courfeyrac and I are planning something for him that night. What about the seventh? Or the ninth?”

“I—no, busy,” he says. “Shit. I—what about lunch on the eighth? Lunch dates are thing, aren’t they? Don’t laugh at me, we’ve already established that I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Grantaire gets his laughter under control. “Lunch dates are a thing,” he says. “And I can do lunch. We can do lunch. How about you pick someplace to have lunch and I’ll pick a place to do dessert?”

“I can do that,” he says. He might ask Courfeyac for suggestions, but there’s nothing wrong on relying on his friend’s expertise in this matter for help.

“Good,” Grantaire says, nodding. “And…you’re sure about this? You want to go on this date with me?”

Enjolras smiles, aiming to be reassuring. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so sure of anything in my life.”

* * *

 

In the end, Enjolras decides it was a crap idea to schedule his first date with Grantaire for nearly two weeks away because by the end of the week, it’s practically impossible for him to focus on anything. He finds his attention wandering back to Grantaire when he’s supposed to be working on anything else and once his mind has found its way to Grantaire, it has a tendency to want to dwell there. And that’s nothing new, not really. He’s had Grantaire-brain for months now, but now it comes with a panicky sense of nervousness whenever he considers the fact that he’s going on a _date_ with Grantaire—and that nervousness makes it hard to get anything done.

Taking advantage of Enjolras’s inability to get anything done, Courfeyrac insists that their ABC meeting that weekend be more of a party instead of a proper meeting. Courfeyrac says that they all deserve a day off to bask in the good work they’ve done instead of keeping their nose to the grindstone. Personally, Enjolras thinks that now is actually the perfect time to keep pushing the school administration about housing accommodations for transgender students because they already have their foot in the door because the administration has given their approval for gender neutral bathrooms, but he concedes to Courfeyrac and leaves his notes and his plans at home when he goes to the Musain to meet up with his friends for drinks.

Normally at events like this, Enjolras keeps close to Courfeyrac or Combeferre. Occasionally, he’ll corner Feuilly for a long, thoughtful conversation. He considers everyone present his friend, but he’s not as good at flitting between people the way Courfeyrac is. But he enjoys watching them. He enjoys seeing his friends happy and relaxed. He’s lingering awkwardly at the head of the table, watching his friends with a smile on his face, when Grantaire catches his attention and calls him over. Enjolras is acutely aware of the fact that every single one of his friends seems to know that he and Grantaire have kissed and that they’ve got a date planned for the following weekend and he can’t stop himself from blushing.

“You know,” he says, taking a seat next to Grantaire, “every time you look at me, I start blushing. It’s a little mortifying.”

“I like it,” Grantaire says. “You look human when you blush.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m going to keep trying to make you blush,” he says. Before Enjolras can offer a rebuttal, Grantaire changes the subject by asking how his classes are going.

While they talk, Enjolras keeps his eyes on his other friends, because he’s certain that Courfeyrac will tease him if he catches him staring at Grantaire. Everyone is relaxed and amiable. Combeferre and Joly sit at one end of the table and complain about their human anatomy class and Jehan is at the other end of the table with Marius and Cosette, braiding Cosette’s hair. Courfeyrac sits in the middle of the table where he can be a part of everyone’s conversations despite his limited mobility.

Enjolras is still talking to Grantaire about classes and schoolwork when Courfeyrac, his gaze locked on the door to the Musain, says loudly, “Oh look, it’s our friendly neighborhood menace, Officer Javert.”

Enjolras turns in his seat to see Javert and another officer try to navigate around the tables. They were heading straight towards them. Enjolras gets to his feet.

“Don’t say anything stupid,” Grantaire warns.

“Officer Javert,” Enjolras says. “Can I help you with something?”

“We’re not here for you,” Javert says. “Surprising though that is. We’re looking for a Jean Prouvaire? We were told we could find him here.”

Jehan looks up from where he was trying to teach Marius how to braid hair. “I’m Jean Prouvaire,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

“We need to ask you a few questions?” female officer asks. Her nametag reads _Parsons_. “You should come with us.”

Enjolras makes a stilling motion in Jehan’s direction. “Is he under arrest?” he asks Javert.

“Prouvaire, if you could just step outside with us—”

“Jehan, you don’t have to go with them if they’re not arresting you,” Enjolras says, talking over Javert.

Javert gives him an annoyed look. “If you please, Mr. Prouvaire,” he says gesturing to the door.

Jehan, looking confused rather than concerned, gets to his feet to follow the officers and Enjolras pushes his chair aside so he can walk with Jehan.

“If you’re not under arrest, you don’t have to go with them,” he says, following Jehan and the officers to the door of the Musain, “nor do you have to answer any of their questions. You can stop talking and leave whenever you want. If they are arresting you—which,” he says, pitching his voice so he knows Javert and Parsons can hear him, “they are legally obligated to inform you if you are under arrest—then you’re protected by the fifth amendment and the Miranda rule. If you don’t have a lawyer, contact me and I’ll get a hold of Lamarque for you. He’s usually good in a pinch. If they take you to the police station or before a judge, then—”

“Enjolras, it’s okay,” Jehan says, pausing at the door which Javert holds open for him. “Thanks for the tips, but I’ll be fine.”

Enjolras watches Jehan and the two officers from the window and he hopes that Jehan is right about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends. Sorry that this chapter is being posted later than usual. I've been wrestling with the end of this for days and I'm still not entirely satisfied with it but I have conceded defeat. Also, apologies that I didn't get around to responding to the comments left on the last chapter. Real life got a little in the way, but thank you to everyone who commented. Your words are always appreciated :)
> 
> Also, I think it's important to note that, according to my outline, we only have ten chapters left of this fic. This both excites me--it's always satisfying to finish a project--and saddens me because I've had such a good time writing this and I've loved every minute of this journey with all of you.
> 
> That said, thank you all so much again for your support and enthusiasm around this fic. The next chapter will be up next Tuesday!


	68. Chapter Sixty-Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan talks to the police

Jehan follows the officers outside the Musain, more confused than concerned. He knows he doesn’t have anything to worry about—he supposes that he did used to smoke weed regularly, but he hasn’t done that in months so he thinks that can hardly be the cause of this—and as a rich white boy, he knows he’s privileged enough to not have to fear the police the way other people do.

“Am I under arrest?” Jehan asks once they’re outside. Their cop car is parked out front, but Jehan doesn’t want to get any closer to it than he has to.

“We just need to ask you a few questions,” Officer Parsons says again.

Jehan looks between both officers. He’d be happy to cooperate with them, if only they’d tell him what’s going on. “So I could leave then if I wanted to?”

“Let’s just say you’re being temporarily detained,” Javert said.

“So I am under arrest,” Jehan says.

“I wouldn’t say that, no,” Parsons says.

“What exactly is going on then?”

“It’s cold out here,” Parsons says. “Why don’t we talk inside the car.”

Jehan doesn’t move. “Seriously, though,” he says. “Am I under arrest? Do I need to call a lawyer?”

Javert looks at him. “Do you think you need a lawyer?”

“I don’t know,” Jehan says. “Am I under arrest? Because if I’m under arrest, I want a lawyer.”

Parsons sighs. “Enough beating around the bush,” she says, casting an annoyed look at both Jehan and Javert. “Look, Mr. Prouvaire—Jean, may I call you Jean?”

“I prefer Jehan.”

She nods. “Jehan, we just want to ask you a few questions about last weekend.”

“What about last weekend?”

“Where were you?” Javert asks.

Jehan thinks about it for the minute and then shrugs. “I spent most of the weekend at the library—I had a paper due on Tuesday—and if I wasn’t at the library, then I was either at my apartment or I was at a friend’s apartment.” He buries his hands in his pocket, trying to stave off the chill from the late winter air. “What’s this about?”

Neither officer answers him.

“Were you around The Midtown Gallery?” Javert asks.

“No,” Jehan says. The Midtown Gallery is a new indie gallery that Grantaire has some art hanging in, but Jehan hasn’t been to see it yet.

“Is there anyone who can confirm that?” Javert asks. It’s clear in his voice that he doesn’t believe Jehan.

“I was with at least one of my friends for pretty much the whole weekend,” he says. His friends are still prone to bouts of rabid over-protectiveness and unless he’s at home, it’s still hard for him to find time alone. “Seriously, though, what is this about?”

“Do you care to explain why your DNA was found at a crime scene outside the gallery if you hadn’t been there all weekend?” Javert asks.

Jehan blinks at him. “My DNA?” he asks. “What crime scene?”

He wonders if it’s too late to call a lawyer. Or maybe he should just go fetch Enjolras.

“We found your hair in an alley outside the gallery,” Parsons says. Her voice, at least, sounds less accusatory than Javert’s. “Near the body of a murdered prostitute. Other than her DNA, your hair was the only evidence we found.”

“What?” Jehan asks. “My hair?”

“Several long strands,” Javert says. “I notice your hair isn’t long anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s because I got it cut. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Were you trying to hide something?” Javert asks.

Jehan gives him a steely look. “No, I cut my hair because I recently got out of an abusive relationship and I wanted a change. I needed a change—not that it’s any of your business.”

“It’s our business if you were responsible for that woman’s death,” Javert says. “Tell me about this abusive relationship of yours.”

Jehan wonders what would happen if he just left right now. He has no desire to rehash the details of what happened between him and Mont to a police officer who obviously doesn’t believe him. “What about it?” he asks.

“You don’t seem hurt to me. Just how long ago was this relationship?”

The disbelief in Javert’s voice is abundantly clear and Jehan chokes back hurt and anger. “I broke up with my boyfriend back in January,” he says.

“And you’re only cutting your hair now?” Javert asks.

“I fail to see how that’s any of your business.”

“Did you press charges against your boyfriend?” Parsons asks. She sounds marginally more believing than her partner does.

“No,” Jehan says.

“So you hid it, then?” Javert asks.

“What?”

“You hid the relationship,” he clarified. “I don’t suppose that the, ah, turmoil from this relationship made you inclined to take your anger out on someone else?”

Jehan gapes at him. “You can’t be serious. You think I did this?” He looks between both officers and shakes his head. “If you’re not going to charge me with anything, I’m out of here.”

“Why didn’t you press charges against your abuser?” Parsons asks, her words drawing him back into the conversation.

He tries to fight the guilt he feels for not disclosing about Mont’s abuse earlier. He tries to ignore the thoughts that he could have stopped the pain far sooner than he did. Those thoughts aren’t healthy, they’re not helpful. “Would you have done anything if I did?” he asks.

“What makes you say that?” she asks.

Jehan scoffs. “I know how people react when men come forward with claims of abuse,” he says. “And I’m willing to bet that you would have told me that boys will be boys and that I just needed to toughen up.”

Parsons at least has the decency to look bashful, but Javert is expressionless. Jehan isn’t surprised.

“That doesn’t change the facts,” Javert says. “Your hair ended up at that crime scene somehow. All our evidence points to you being involved in that woman’s murder or at least witnessing it. So which is it?”

“Neither,” Jehan says. “I—when did you say she was killed?”

“It was this past weekend,” Parsons says.

“I got my hair cut two weeks ago,” Jehan says. “Right after Valentine’s Day. One of my friends in the café cut it for me, and two more of them watched her do it—and I donated it. If you don’t believe me, I bet the donation place has some sort of record. I don’t know how my hair got to your crime scene, but it couldn’t have been from me being there.”

Parsons sighs. “There goes that lead,” she mutters. She turns her attention back to Jehan. “This is going out on a limb, but is there anyone who’d want to incriminate you or anyone who might have your hair who’d be involved in something like this? Honestly, it’s likely that your hair got caught to someone’s jacket or jeans or something and it just ended up at the crime scene unintentionally. I know it’s a long shot, but do you know anyone who might be involved?”

“No,” Jehan says. “I can’t think of anyone.”

But as soon as those words are out of his mouth, he knows that’s not right. Mont could be involved in something like this, so could any of his friends.

Shit.

Parsons nods and pulls out a business card. “If you think of anyone, please give us a call,” she says, handing over the card. “Sorry for bothering you, Jehan.”

He takes the card and nods absently at them. While they climb back into their squad car, Jehan sags against the wall outside the Musain.

Mont.

Mont told him that his hair was still all over the apartment, that it was everywhere. His hair could have gotten stuck to Mont’s clothes or…or Mont could have tried to set him up deliberately by planting his hair on the crime scene.

No. No, it can’t be.

He doesn’t want to believe that Mont is capable of something like this. He doesn’t want to believe that someone he loved—still loves, in his own way, because there are still memories of Mont that he cherishes—is capable of murdering someone.

Many someones, because these attacks have been going on for _months_. Almost six months, he remembers. All the way back when he first met Courfeyrac and the others—they’d been trying to lobby for attention about these attacks all the way back in October.

But no. It couldn’t be Mont. Maybe Patron Minette, but not Mont. There’s no way he could be involved.

And then Jehan remembers November and he remembers Mont disappearing for a week and he remembers that that’s when he and Mont started arguing more, that’s when Mont started acting like someone he didn’t recognize.

That’s when the first sex worker was murdered, instead of just being attacked.

And he remembers Mont’s excuse for his changing behavior—that he had seen someone bleed out and die on a warehouse floor.

Jehan can’t remember where the body of the first murdered sex worker was found, and to be honest, he doesn’t really _want_ to remember.

He feels sick. Mont can’t be responsible for this. He just can’t. It isn’t possible. Jehan doesn’t want to believe it’s possible. Maybe Guelemer or Babet or Claquesous. Maybe one of them is responsible for this, but not Mont.

Shit.

He should tell the police. He should call the number on the card right now and tell before anyone else gets hurt, but he can’t. Because maybe Mont’s not involved. Maybe he doesn’t even know that Guelemer or one of the others is doing this. But if Jehan calls the cops on Mont now—well, Mont might be innocent when it comes to the sex workers, but there’s a whole lot that he is guilty of and Jehan can’t be responsible for ruining his life like that, not if there’s a chance he’s not involved in these attacks. He may not want anything to do with Mont anymore, but he can’t throw him to the sharks like this.

He needs to talk to Mont. He needs to hear what’s going on from Mont. He sighs and rubs the back of his neck. He needs to talk to Mont, but first he needs to talk to his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday, folks! Thank you, as always, for your support and comments and kudos and general awesomeness. You are all the very best :)
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday!


	69. Chapter Sixty-Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courfeyrac tries to tell Jehan why going anywhere near Montparnasse is a very bad idea

Courfeyrac gets to his feet when Jehan comes back inside the Musain, trying to get a good look at him as though that’ll somehow clue him in to what this whole mess with the police was about.

“Sit down before you hurt yourself,” Combeferre says. “He’s headed this way.”

“I can manage standing,” Courfeyrac says, even as he balances himself against the table to keep his weight off his bad leg. He studies Jehan. He doesn’t look shaken, nor does he look perturbed. If anything, he looks thoughtful.

“What was that all about?” Grantaire asks, pulling out a chair beside him so Jehan can sit down.

Jehan glances around the table before his eyes settle on Courfeyrac and Courfeyrac wishes he weren’t sitting on the other side of the table.

“They found my DNA at a crime scene,” he says. “Right were one of the sex workers was attacked.”

There’s a brief moment of shocked silence.

“They what?” Bahorel asks.

“They found my DNA,” he says again. “Apparently some of my hair was in the alley, I guess.”

Feuilly shakes his head. “I get that they’d have your prints on file—they have all our prints on file because we’ve all been arrested—but how’d they even get your DNA?”

Jehan lets out an embarrassed sounding laugh. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” he says.

“Well now you have to tell us, Jehan,” Courfeyrac says, leaning across the table. If Jehan is feeling well enough to laugh, than surely nothing too bad has happened. “No secrets among friends.”

Jehan rolls his eyes at him. “You know those kits that parents sometimes get to keep track of important stuff about their kids in case their kids get lost or abducted or something? Well, my mom was a little over-zealous about that kind of stuff. I don’t think my dad would have noticed at all if I’d gone missing as a child—which, looking back at it, might have been part of the problem—but my mom was a little paranoid about it, so she always got the most state-of-the-art kits and some of them wanted hair samples for DNA, and I guess that information got logged with the police systems. I can only imagine it was some sort of pre-emptive reporting in case I did go missing or something.”

Courfeyrac snorts. “Shit, and here I was thinking that Marius’s stodgy old grandfather was the only one foolish enough to invest in those stupid kits.” He had spent a good portion of high school teasing Marius about those kits and making fake plans to kidnap his friend to see how effective the kit would be.

Jehan shares a sympathetic glance with Marius and shrugs. “Guess not,” he says. “Anyway, the police found my DNA on the scene and figured that meant I was a witness or a suspect and they just wanted to ask questions about it. That’s all—and at least now we know they’re doing something about the attacks on the sex workers.”

And that gets Enjolras ranting about shoddy police work and officers jumping to conclusions—“They didn’t even stop to _think_ how Jehan’s hair could have gotten there!”—and how it’s probably a violation of privacy to tap into the databases those kits use anyway. Whereas Courfeyrac and most of his friends look amused at Enjolras’s rant, Jehan still looks pensive.

Courfeyrac leans farther across the table so he can reach out and touch Jehan’s hand. “What’s on your mind?” he asks.

Jehan looks up at him and hesitates, like he’s unsure of whether or not he wants to say what’s on his mind.

“You can trust me with anything,” he reminds Jehan. “You know that.”

“I think Patron-Minette might be involved in the attacks on the sex workers,” he says quietly.

But not quietly enough.

“What was that?” Grantaire says loudly, cutting Enjolras’s rant off. “Did you say Patron-Minette?”

“Did you tell the police?” Courfeyrac asks.

Jehan looks away. “No.”         

“Why the fuck not?” Grantaire says.

“Because I don’t know anything for certain,” he says. He licks his lips. “I want to talk to Mont about this.”

“What?” Courfeyrac squawks. “No. Absolutely not.”

The idea of Jehan going anywhere Montparnasse makes his heart pound frantically.

Jehan shrugs. “If I can talk to him, if Patron-Minette is behind this, then maybe I can talk Mont into turning himself in.” In a quiet voice, barely audible over the usual clamor of the Musain, Jehan adds, “They’ll go easier on him if he turns himself in.”

“And that’s what you want?” Courfeyrac asks. “For them to go easy on him?”

“If he’s involved with this,” Jehan says, “then he deserves to go to prison. I’m not saying that he doesn’t. But is it so wrong of me to want mercy for someone who’s meant a lot to me over the years?”

Before Courfeyrac can think of a tactful way to suggest that maybe Jehan is a little too emotionally involved in this situation, Enjolras says, “Mercy? People are _dead_ because of him! Don’t they deserve justice?”

“After all Parnasse did to you,” Grantaire adds, “do you really want him to walk away with some slap on the wrist sentence for this?”

The look Jehan has for both of them is unyielding. “Mont has done terrible, awful things,” he says. “I won’t deny that. I won’t cover for him, and I know all of you have seen the worst of him, but I’ve also seen the best of him and I’ve loved the best of him and that’s not something I can just forget!”

“We’re not asking you to forget any of that,” Eponine says. “But Enjolras makes a good point. The people Montparnasse has hurt—and that includes you, Jehan—they deserve justice. You deserve justice.”

“And I hope they find it,” Jehan says. “Honestly, I do. I’m not asking anyone to pardon him here. I’d be quite happy to never see Mont ever again after the way he’s hurt me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not also capable of wanting the best for him.”

“Jehan, it’s just not a good idea to see him again,” Courfeyrac says. “If you’re not comfortable turning him in, that’s okay. None of us are going to judge you for that, but if he’s involved in these attacks, then the police need to know. If you’re not comfortable turning him in, then one of us will. You don’t have to be involved at all.”

“But I don’t know if he’s involved in any of this,” Jehan says. “I don’t know if Patron-Minette is involved. For all I know, this could all just be in my head. As far as I know, Patron-Minette usually deals in drugs and petty theft—not rape and murder. This might not be them.”

Eponine shakes her head. “You wouldn’t have mentioned it if you didn’t think it were true. You know what Patron-Minette is capable of. You and Courfeyrac both do.”

“Just because they’re capable of it doesn’t mean they did it,” Jehan says. “And I’m not saying that I’d deliberately withhold this information if it came to that. I just want to talk to Mont first. That’s all. Once I talk to him, I’ll gladly hand over any and all information to the police.”

“Jehan, the last time you saw Montparnasse you had a panic attack,” Grantaire says.

He shakes his head. “This will be different. Last time, Mont cornered me in a grocery store when I wasn’t expecting him. That’s what really upset me. I wasn’t prepared to see him then, but if I’m seeking him out—I’ll be fine. I can do this.”

Enjolras levels him with a steady glare. “If you’re not going to tell the police that you suspect Patron-Minette is involved, then I will. You understand that, right?”

“I will,” Jehan says. “I just want to talk to Mont first.”

Later that evening, Courfeyrac takes the opportunity to try to convince Jehan that it’s a colossally bad idea to go talk to Montparnasse. It’s not that he doesn’t think that Jehan can handle himself—he’s always thought Jehan is strong than most people give him credit for—but he doesn’t trust Montparnasse any further than he could throw him. He doesn’t want Jehan and Montparnasse in the same _city_ , let alone being anywhere close enough to each other to have a conversation. But he knows Jehan feels self-conscious about people trying to protect him and he knows that Jehan doesn’t like being confronted in public, so he waits till their alone before he brings it up.

They’re back at his place—well, Enjolras and Combeferre’s place which he’s still crashing because of his knee—and they eat dinner together and Courfeyrac listens to Jehan talk about a paper he’s working on for one of his English classes and he waits till there’s a natural lull in the conversation before he attempts to broach the subject.

“Jehan?” he asks.

“Hmmm?”

“Can we talk about you wanting to go see Montparnasse?” he asks.

Jehan looks up at him. “What exactly do you want to talk about?”

“I know this is your decision and everything, but I _really_ don’t like the idea of you going anywhere near him.”

“I’ve made up my mind,” Jehan says.

“And I’m not trying to change your mind,” he says. “Okay, well, no. I am trying to change your mind. I would do just about anything to get you to change your mind about this, but I know I can’t stop you and I’m not trying to control you or anything, but I think it’s important that you know how I feel about this.”

“And how do you feel about this?”

“To be honest,” he says, “the idea of you going anywhere near that bastard scares the shit out of me, Jehan. And I know you’re strong and capable and all that—trust me, love, I know how strong you are—but he’s strong too and he has already caused you so much pain and—”

“I’m not planning on confronting him anywhere where he could get away with hurting me,” Jehan says. “I’m not that foolish. I was going to talk to him somewhere public, somewhere with witnesses.”

“I appreciate that,” Courfeyrac says and he does appreciate it, but it only alleviates the tiniest amount of his fear, “and I understand that this is something that you want to do, but please try to understand where I’m coming from. I watched him terrorize you for months and I don’t trust him. I’m not capable of trusting him. I know that your feelings about him are more complicated than that, and that’s okay. It really is, Jehan. I know that he was an important part of your life for a long time and I know that you have some good memories with him, but I don’t have those experiences. I only have the memories of seeing you covered in bruises and flinching away from him and it terrifies me to think that you’ll be going anywhere near him again.”

Jehan is quiet for a long moment and he stares at Courfeyrac in a way that reassures him that Jehan is taking him seriously. “Thank you for being honest with me,” he says. “I really do appreciate that and I don’t want you to feel like I’m just ignoring your feelings, Courf, because that’s not okay. I hear what you’re trying to say and I understand that this scares you. To be honest, it scares me a little too, but I really think this is what I need. I think it’s really important for me to see Mont on my terms and to just…just have my say and clear some of the air between me and Mont. This is…this is something that I think needs to happen, but I’ll be smart about it, okay?”

“Will you talk to Bahorel before you track down Mont?” he asks. He knows Bahorel will be able to equip Jehan with some sort of weapon or at the very least some knowledge of how to protect himself.

“We’ll talk to him together,” Jehan says. “And I won’t go until you and Bahorel think I’m adequately prepared. Does that help?”

He nods. “I still don’t like this.”

“I don’t expect you to,” Jehan says. “But it means more than I can say that you’re willing to let me do it anyway.”

Courfeyrac reaches across the table to squeeze Jehan’s hand and he hopes that he doesn’t end up regretting this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your continued support of this fic (even as Jehan shows some remarkably poor decision making skills...). Your comments and kudos always make my day :)
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday!


	70. Chapter Seventy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan and Montparnasse have a chat

It’s Monday before Jehan is able to seek out Montparnasse. He calls Mont’s phone when he knows Mont will be busy—Mont was always busy on Sunday nights—and he leaves a message.

“We need to talk,” he says and then he leaves a time and the location at a public park for Mont to meet him.

After all the phone calls and text messages and emails that Mont has sent him since January, Jehan is pretty certain that Mont will show up at the appointed time and place. He doesn’t know if that makes him more or less nervous, though. He manages to make his way through his Monday morning classes without any sort of mishap and he has a quiet lunch with Courfeyrac during which neither of them talk about Jehan’s plans to meet up with Mont. At a quarter till one, Jehan heads to the park.

Mont is late, which Jehan is reasonably certain is some sort of attempt to make him feel uncomfortable or vulnerable and so he refuses to feel uncomfortable or vulnerable. He takes comfort in the knife in his back pocket, even though he’s pretty certain he won’t use it, and he takes more comfort in the pepper spray in the pocket of his coat, because he’s pretty sure he could handle using that if Mont does anything unseemly.

Jehan sighs and checks the time on his phone. It’s already 1:15 and he told Courfeyrac, Grantaire, Eponine, and Bahorel that he’d be done with Montparnasse by 1:30. If Mont doesn’t show up before then, then Jehan’s just going to go home. He’s not going to let Montparnasse jerk him around like this anymore. Grantaire had spent most of last night at Bahorel’s apartment, letting Jehan know in no uncertain terms what an utterly idiotic idea he thought this whole thing was. Jehan listened patiently even as Bahorel showed him a few basic self-defense moves. He’s not going to do anything to put himself in needless danger today. He saw the fear in Grantaire’s eyes last night. He understood that Grantaire’s lecturing was rooted in fear and concern and that, as far as Grantaire could tell, Jehan had lost every last self-preservation instinct he’d ever had.

Jehan isn’t sure yet if Grantaire is wrong about that or not.

“I knew you couldn’t stay away for long, bird,” Montparnasse says when he approaches down the park path.

Jehan rolls his eyes. He keeps his hands buried in his pockets, his right hand fisted tightly over the little canister of pepper spray. “I wanted to talk, Mont,” he says. “I have zero intentions of getting back together with you.”

Now that he’s close enough, Jehan takes the opportunity to study Montparnasse. He’s as beautiful and cold as he always was and Jehan is surprised that he doesn’t feel panicked or anxious at seeing Mont here and now. He takes that as a good sign.

“We’ll see about that,” Mont says.

“Right, well, have fun waiting forever because it’s not going to happen,” Jehan says. “But we need to talk.”

“Funny,” Mont says, “that’s what your little pal Grantaire said about ten minutes before he punched me in the face.”

“Somehow I doubt that Grantaire was in the wrong there,” Jehan says. Grantaire couldn’t have hit Mont that hard. There are no bruises on his face and Jehan knows well that Mont can hit hard enough that the bruises will cling to skin for weeks on end.

“If you wanted to talk back then, you could have just asked,” Mont says. “I’m cooperating now, aren’t I? You didn’t have to send your fuckwad boy scouts after me to do your dirty work.”

“I had nothing to do with any of that,” Jehan says. “They were the ones who wanted to talk with you, not me. And besides, you’re one to talk about sending other people to do your dirty work, or did you forget that last month Guelemer and Claquesous and Babet put me and one of my friends in the hospital?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mont says.

Jehan rolls his eyes again. He wonders if Mont has always been this annoying or if this is a new development. “And that’s not what I came to talk about.”

“Do tell what’s on your mind, bird.”

“Care to explain why the police found my hair at a crime scene from last weekend?”

“I thought you always said a life of crime didn’t suit you,” he says.

“Long hairs,” Jehan says, ignoring Mont’s flippant comment and gesturing towards his cropped hair. “The sort that you told me you kept finding around the apartment.”

“Stop beating around the bush, Jehan.” His voice has gone cold, the way it always did before an explosive display of temper. Jehan instinctively takes a step before remembering that he’s out in the open. He has plenty of space to run away. Mont can’t corner him here.

He doesn’t miss the way Mont smirked when he stepped back, though.

“Have you been attacking those sex workers?” Jehan asks.

Mont’s face is expressionless.

Jehan sighs. “Here’s the thing, Mont. I have more than enough information to hand you over to the police on this matter, the only reason I haven’t done that yet is because I wanted an explanation from you, which I’m beginning to think I’m not going to get. So here’s the deal—you have a week to turn yourself in. They’ll go easier on you if you turn yourself in and you have a week to get everything else in order—hell, you could even leave town by next week, I really don’t care—but by next Monday, I’m turning you in myself. And if you try to hurt anyone—another sex worker, me, my friends, anyone—I will turn you immediately—along with enough information about your drug trafficking endeavors to get you locked up for a long time.”

“How gracious of you,” Mont sneers.

He always hated when Mont got that tone in his voice. He sounds hateful and cruel. “It’s probably more than you deserve,” Jehan says.

“You don’t mean that,” Mont says. His voice is a little warmer now, a little more charming—more like the Montparnasse Jehan had once fallen in love with. “After all we’ve been through, I know you still think fondly of me. You would have turned me in already if you didn’t. You still love me.”

Jehan shakes his head. “Do you really think I could still love you after everything you did to me?”

“Like all the times that I gave you an escape when your dad was a bastard to you? Or all those times I helped you through your anxiety attacks? Or maybe you mean that time when your parents came up for parents weekend and you freaked out and didn’t leave your dorm room for a week and I took care of you?”

Jehan doesn’t let himself be swayed. “I mean all those weeks when I was covered in bruises that you gave me. I mean every single night that I cried myself to sleep because I was in so much pain. I mean all the hours that I spent trying to figure out what _I_ was doing wrong and what _I_  had done to make you hit me.”

“Those were all accidents,” Mont says. “I just—”

“Lost your temper?” Jehan finishes for him. “Yes, I know. You’ve told me.” He studies the cold lines of Mont’s face for a moment, surprised that he doesn’t feel any sort of affection for the man in front of him. Mont isn’t who he was once—he’s no longer the man Jehan fell in love with. Jehan doesn’t know exactly what happened to that man, but he doesn’t think he’s ever coming back. “You’ve got a week, Mont. Now, if you don’t mind, I think we’re done here.”

He turns to leave, but he feels Mont’s hand close around his left arm and jerk him close.

“We’re not done until I say we are,” Mont hisses.

Panic and fear swell up inside him—Mont is too close, he’s too rough, he’s too angry—and before Jehan really knows what he’s doing, he’s gotten the pepper spray out of his pocket and he’s spraying it right in Mont’s face.

Mont lets go of him immediately, cursing violently.

“I said we’re done,” Jehan says.

He turns his back on Mont and he leaves without looking back.

Once out of the park, Jehan gasps for air that feels reluctant to come and sends a group message to his friends to let them know he’s okay before he heads straight to Grantaire’s apartment as previously planned. It had been a compromise to get Grantaire to stop lecturing last night. Grantaire wanted to be able to see with his own eyes that Jehan was okay and to be on hand in case anything did go wrong. Still feeling a little shaky, Jehan lets himself into Grantaire’s apartment, knowing that at this time of the day it’ll be unlocked, and he’s surprised to find Courfeyrac sitting on the couch with Grantaire, his bad leg propped up on the coffee table.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, shutting the door behind him and unwinding the scarf from around his neck. “I thought you had class.”

“I’m skipping,” he says. “Obviously. Call me paranoid, but I needed to see that you’re okay.” His eyes narrow. “Your hands are shaking.”

“Nerves,” Jehan says. His has left his heart beating erratically in his chest. He’s better off than he could have been, but he still feels unsettled. Having Grantaire and Courfeyrac here is more than he dared to hope for, but he feels better with both of them here.

“Thought that might be the way of it,” Grantaire says, hauling himself off the couch. “That’s why I stocked up on your favorite pretentious tea ahead of time and already have the kettle on.”

Jehan smiles at his oldest friend and gives his arm a gentle squeeze as he passes. He sheds his coat and gloves and takes a seat next to Courfeyrac on the couch. Courfeyrac shuts his laptop before Jehan can see what’s pulled up on the screen.

“And just what were you two up to?” he asks. He knows they both want to know how things went with Montparnasse but Jehan wants just a little more time to sort out his head before he regales them with the encounter.

“Planning your birthday party this weekend,” Courfeyrac says. “And drafting up snarky emails to send to my doctor. She wants me to start physical therapy this weekend.”

“Isn’t that a little soon?” Jehan asks.

Courfeyrac shrugs. “Damned if I know, but I got an email about it right after lunch. She says that my most recent x-rays show that I’m healing well and that we should start with the torture pronto, but it’s your birthday this weekend. I don’t want to miss it.”

“My birthday is only one day, not the whole weekend,” he says. “And Grantaire and Enjolras are already doing their date that afternoon. You can do your physical therapy then.”

“And be in excruciating pain for the party? I think not. I intend to celebrate with you, not make you nurse me back to health.” He offers up a wicked smile. “Although, now that I think about it, maybe that won’t be so bad…”

Jehan laughs and accepts the cup of tea that Grantaire hands him as he comes back in.

“Enough small talk,” Grantaire says, collapsing into the arm chair next to the couch. He studies Jehan with keen eyes. “How were things with Montparnasse? You’re not hurt, are you?”

Jehan avoids eye contact and drinks his tea to put off the conversation a little longer.

Grantaire sees right through that ploy. “None of that now,” he says. “You made the two of us go along with your idiotic plan to go see Montparnasse and I’ll have you know that we’ve both been fretting over you. Now. Tell us what happened.”

“Nothing noteworthy,” Jehan says. When Grantaire and Courfeyrac both give him a disbelieving look, he adds, “Honestly. I just told him that I knew about him and the sex workers and that I was going to the police.”

“And you expect us to believe he was okay with that?” Grantaire says.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Jehan says. “I mean, he wasn’t thrilled about it, but I don’t know. It was weird.”

“Did he hurt you?” Courfeyrac asks. “Did he touch you?”

“He grabbed my arm as I was trying to leave,” Jehan says. His grip was probably hard enough to bruise, but he decides to leave out that particular detail. “I pepper-sprayed him.”

“Damn,” Grantaire says. “I was hoping you’d pull the knife on him.”

“Knife?” Courfeyrac asks. “What knife?”

“Bahorel lent me a knife and some pepper spray last night,” Jehan explains. “As precautionary measures.”

“Good thing,” Grantaire says. “If that asshole was getting grabby with you.”

Jehan wraps his hands around his tea and leans against Courfeyrac’s side. He doesn’t want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t had that pepper spray. “In any case, I gave him a week to turn himself in before I go to the police and then he’ll be out of my hair forever.”

“A week?” Courfeyrac asks. “Don’t you think it’d be better to just go to the police now?”

“I wanted to give him a chance to do the right thing and turn himself in,” Jehan says. “And I might have blackmailed him a little into keeping his nose clean in the meantime. I sort of might know more than I should about his drug trafficking business and while I can see him being able to wrangle out of the assault and murder charges if he tries hard enough, there’s no way he wouldn’t be convicted with the drug charges. Not with the dirt I have on him. He won’t risk it.”

“Are you sure about that?” Courfeyrac asks.

Jehan nods. “Mont’s self-preservation instincts will win out every time. He’s not going to make this any worse for himself than it already is.”

Courfeyrac still doesn’t look convinced, but Grantaire agrees with Jehan.

“He’s probably just going to skip town,” Grantaire says. “Get his affairs in order and start somewhere new. He has the means to do it.” He looks at Jehan. “And I assume you’re still going to tell the police after a week whether he’s still here or not?”

“That’s the plan,” Jehan says. He takes Courfeyrac’s hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “He can’t hurt us anymore. One more week, and he’s gone for good.”

They linger in Grantaire’s apartment for an hour or so before Grantaire has to leave for work. He offers to let them stay in his apartment while they’re gone, but neither Jehan nor Courfeyrac want to be an inconvenience, so they gather up their things and head out to the Musain.

“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” Jehan says when they’re outside and have parted ways with Grantaire. He walks slowly beside Courfeyrac, who’s mobility is still hampered by his crutches even if he is much faster and much more proficient at them now than he was a month ago.

“Is everything okay? Did Montparnasse do something you didn’t want to say in front of Grantaire?”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Jehan says. “I know you think it was stupid of me to go through with this whole thing, but I really needed this. I…the man I saw today wasn’t the man I fell in love with two years ago. I don’t know what’s happened, but he’s different and the man I love is gone. When I saw him at the park, I didn’t feel anything for him, Courf. He was just another person to me. I don’t think I’m in love with him anymore.”

“That’s great,” Courfeyrac says. “I’m glad you’re starting to move on. This is a really important step.”

“About moving on,” Jehan says. He reaches out to touch Courfeyrac’s arm to get him to stop walking. “I know we were going to wait until everything with Mont blew over before we officially started dating or whatever, but if you think you’re ready, I think I’d like to make this official between us.”

Courfeyrac gapes at him. “Are you…are you serious?”

Jehan can see the happiness in his eyes and he nods. “I mean, there’s no sense in waiting, is there? We wanted to give me the time and space to get over Mont and that’s happened and I’m starting to feel like I’ve spent enough of my life _not_ dating you and we should change that. I mean, as long as you’re okay with changing that. What you want matters here too.”

“Of course I’m okay with this!” Courfeyrac says, laughing. “Shit, Jehan, I’ve been okay with this for nearly six months! I was just waiting for you.”

Courfeyrac sounds so pleased, so thrilled that Jehan can feel his face flushing. He hadn’t realized how much restraint Courfeyrac had been showing in the month since their last talk about dating each other exclusively and he hadn’t realized how much his heart needed this sort of enthusiasm. He can’t help the smile on his face. “So, we’re dating now? Officially?”

“Jehan, I will change my facebook relationship status right now if you want me to.”

He laughs a little. “I think—if you’re okay with it, of course—that we should at least wait till after this weekend to tell our friends. It’s just I know how excited R is about his date with Enjolras and I don’t—I don’t know, maybe this is silly—but I don’t want to take the attention off him and Enjolras right now.”

“I not only get to be your boyfriend,” Courfeyrac says, his wicked smile back on his face, “but I get to be your _secret_ boyfriend for the next week? Be still my beating heart! Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to have a secret relationship with someone? Combeferre told me years and years ago that I’d never be able to keep something like that from him and Enjolras and I’ve been itching for years to prove him wrong. And don’t laugh at me—I’m a man of simple pleasures.”

“I suppose simple pleasures mean that I don’t have to take you anywhere too fancy for dinner tonight,” Jehan says. “Maybe just that soup and salad place you like?”

“Like a real date?” Courfeyrac says.

Jehan nods.

“Because you’re my boyfriend and boyfriends take each other on dates?”

“Exactly.”

“Fuck, you’re perfect,” Courfeyrac says. He thrusts his crutches at Jehan. “Here, take these. There’s something I want to do.”

He hobbles closer to Jehan and steadies himself against him and Jehan knows he’s blushing because they’re in the middle of the street and people are watching them, but he can’t stop smiling. Courfeyrac places his hands on Jehan’s cheeks and moves in for a kiss.

This kiss is more than what they’ve shared before. It feels more real, more substantial, more alive and Jehan drops Courfeyrac’s crutches so he can clutch his boyfriend— _his boyfriend_ —closer to him. He never wants to let go and he whines when Courfeyrac pulls away.

Courfeyrac chuckles at him and gives him a peck on the nose. “There’s more where that came from,” he says. “I promise you.”

Jehan’s cheeks hurt because his smile is so wide. “I’m looking forward to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know a lot of you were nervous about this chapter, but see? I'm capable of making things work out happily!
> 
> Anyway, thank you--as always--for your support and comments and kudos and all that good stuff and I'm sorry that I didn't get around to responding to comments from last chapter. This past week was a bit of a nightmare as I was trying to finish up my Big Bang stuff before the deadline and then I got sick. BUT I'm doing better now and I have delivered to you a happy chapter. You're all wonderful.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday.


	71. Chapter Seventy-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eponine gets an unwanted phone call

On Wednesday, Eponine comes home from an afternoon shift at work, and her apartment is quiet. Blissfully so. There’s a scrawled note on the kitchen counter from Grantaire to inform her that he’s taken Gavroche and Azelma out for donuts—there’s a sale at Krispy Kreme, he says—and that she’s under strict orders to enjoy having the apartment to herself for an hour or so.

And she does.

She strips out of her work clothes and takes an extra-long shower, thoroughly enjoying the fact that she doesn’t have to listen to Azelma bang on the door, demanding that it’s her turn and Eponine’s been in too long, and that she doesn’t have to worry about Gavroche getting into trouble because she’s spending too long behind locked doors. She lets the hot water pour over her and she lets go and she relaxes.

She didn’t think it would ever be possible, but she’s getting rather good at relaxing these days.

Gavroche and Azelma are both healthy and safe and cared for. Azelma is still a little skittish around men she doesn’t know, but the social worker helped Eponine find a good therapist for her. Azelma’s now working through her issues instead of hiding from them. Eponine doesn’t know the extent of what’s happened to her little sister since she’s been away at school, but she can hazard a guess from the way Azelma positively flinches whenever her male friends come too close and she feels happier than she can say that she’s helped her baby sister get the help she needs.

And Gavroche is doing well in school for a change. He still has a pesky inclination to skip classes and to talk back to teachers. Ever since Enjolras planted the idea of civil disobedience in his head, he’s really taken to the idea, and under Courfeyrac’s influence, he’s becoming remarkably good at debate—both of which would normally be skills that would cause trouble—but he’s also benefiting from Combeferre’s strong and steady influence, which tempers the amount of trouble he gets into.

Combeferre and Gavroche actually get along great, which was more than Eponine had hoped for when she took her siblings in. Mostly she had just hoped that Gavroche wouldn’t drive Combeferre away.

But things are so much better than that.

Because she and Combeferre are doing better than ever. She didn’t know that relationships could be this easy. Combeferre is steady and stable. He’s not possessive or jealous or clingy. He’s supportive and encouraging. She readily admits that she thinks he might be perfect, but she knows her opinion is biased. Ever since she accidentally told him that she loves him last month, they’ve both felt secure and confident in their relationship. They’re a team—and a damn good one, at that. He comes over often, especially on nights when she has to work late or needs to study for a test or write a paper, to help wrangle her siblings. Azelma is comfortable enough around him that she’ll ask him for help on her math and science homework and Gavroche actually listens to Combeferre when he suggests that perhaps Gavroche would be better off doing something that won’t get him in trouble with his teachers. (Combeferre told her once that he’s been suggesting alternate courses of action like this for Enjolras since they were nine and by now it’s habit.) When Combeferre got accepted into his top choice for med school, Gavroche insisted that they all go out for ice cream to celebrate together. They feel like a family. An actual, happy, functional family, not the mess she had grown up with.

Her siblings are happy. She and Combeferre are happy. Jehan is safe and learning to be whole again and Courfeyrac’s leg is healing (and if the blushing looks they keep shooting each other are any indication, they’ll make their relationship exclusive within the fortnight). Grantaire—whom Eponine honestly worried would never know real happiness—fills her home with a quiet, bemused (albeit hesitant) sort of joy. He’s smiling and laughing in ways that she didn’t think he was capable of after his mom’s suicide, and she’s terrified that it will all shatter if Enjolras ends up rejecting Grantaire, but Combeferre assures her that won’t happen.

According to Combeferre, Enjolras has been swinging from a rather distracted form of his usual behavior to a strange combination of giddy and panicked. Apparently Enjolras worked himself into such a state the other day, demanding that Courfeyrac coach him through the ins and outs of a typical first date, that Courfeyrac nearly pulled a muscle from laughing so hard.

Eponine didn’t know she could feel this content in life. She didn’t know that things could be easy.

There’s a chance that this could all still blow up in her face and she knows that. She doesn’t have official custody of her siblings yet and she won’t until another hearing that’s scheduled for some time in April, but the social worker has been meeting with her and Grantaire and has assured her over and over that they are far better fit to take care of her siblings than her parents are. And there’s a chance that Enjolras could break Grantaire’s heart and there’s a chance that Montparnasse could try to exact some sort of revenge on Jehan and Courfeyrac, but Eponine thinks the joy she’s found now is worth the pain it might cause later.

The apartment is still empty when she gets out of the shower and she dries off before donning her favorite pair of sweats (and a t-shirt that she appropriated from Combeferre’s wardrobe) and tying her hair up into a loose, messy bun. She’s feeling rather domestic, so she searches the kitchen for something she can scare up for dinner.

She’s not much of a cook—Combeferre, Grantaire, and Azelma are all better at it than she is—but they’ve got everything she needs to make spaghetti and it would take a far worse cook than her to screw up spaghetti. She’s just finishing up when Grantaire and her siblings come home.

“How were the donuts?” she asks when they come inside.

“Your friends are weird,” Azelma says, shrugging out of her coat.

Eponine looks to Grantaire for an explanation.

“We saw Jehan and Courfeyrac there,” he says. “They were doing that thing were they pretend that we didn’t just see them holding hands before they noticed we were there.”

She rolls her eyes and wonders when Jehan and Courfeyrac will get their act together. She hopes it’s soon because she really doesn’t want to watch them drag this out the way Enjolras and Grantaire have. “Dinner’s almost ready if you guys didn’t fill up too much on donuts.”

“You’re a god send,” Grantaire says before excusing himself to wash up in the bathroom. Azelma flops down on the couch in the living room and starts flipping through channels on TV, searching for something to watch while they eat, but Gavroche lingers in the kitchen.

“Have you checked your phone lately?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “Were you trying to call me?”

Gavroche shakes his head. “Dad called. He’s been trying to get a hold of you.”

She asks Azelma to toss her purse to her and she digs through it till she finds her phone. It’s on vibrate and she has four missed calls from her father.

She rolls her eyes. It’s not like she would have answered them even if she had heard the calls. Since her meltdown at the courthouse back in February, she’s decided she doesn’t need her parents in her life. She only kept in touch with them before now because she was trying to keep track of Azelma and Gavroche, but now that they’re safely out of her parents clutches, well, she doesn’t have any need of them at all.

“Why’d you answer when he called?” she asks Gavroche.

He shrugs. “Thought it might be important.”

“Was it? Did he say why he was trying to get a hold of me?”

“Nope,” Gavroche says. “Just told me to tell you to answer your fucking phone—his words, not mine.”

“Yeah, well, none of us are answering his calls for the rest of the night, okay? Nothing good can come from it.” She wishes her parents didn’t still have paternal rights to Azelma and Gavroche because then maybe she could file a restraining order or something and keep them from calling at all. But wishful thinking will get her nowhere and she helps Gavroche wash a few plates so they all have something clean to eat off of. When Combeferre is over, she likes to have nice dinners at the table, but Combeferre is busy holding a review for a test in the anatomy class he TAs for, so she dishes up the spaghetti onto plates and helps Gavroche carry them into the living room.

Azelma has some trashy reality TV show turned on—the sort of show that all of them enjoy mocking—and when Grantaire comes back out, they all settle down to eat. It’d be an enjoyable meal if her phone didn’t keep ringing. Within the space of fifteen minutes, her dad calls her no less than twenty times.

She ignores it and she tells everyone else to do the same.

When Grantaire’s phone starts ringing, though, Gavroche loses his patience. “For crying out loud,” he says. “Just answer the stupid phone and find out what he wants!”

“I don’t have to talk to him if I don’t want to,” she says. Grantaire ignores the call and the ringing stops.

A moment later, her own phone starts ringing again.

“You know he’s not going to stop until you pick up,” Azelma says. “He’ll call all night if you let him.”

“Then we’ll turn our phones off.” She reaches for her phone to turn it off, but Gavroche lunges for it first. Before Eponine can wrestle it from his grip, he’s answered the phone.

“Yeah,” he says. “She’s right here.” He holds out the phone. “Just talk to him. I’m not going to listen to this all night.”

Sighing, she grabs the phone from him. She considers just hanging up for a second but decides against it. Azelma and Gavroche are right. If her dad is going through these lengths to talk to her, he’s not going to give up until he gets his way.

Stubborn bastard.

“What do you want?” she asks. She stands and walks out of the living room so they can talk privately.

“Eponine, bout time you answered your damned phone.”

“What do you want?” she says again.

“Just checking up on my children,” he says. “No shame in that, is there? I’m just trying to be an involved parent.”

“Is social services putting you up to this?” she asks. “Because I doubt it was their intention to have you harass me over the phone.”

“Wanting to talk to my favorite daughter is hardly harassment.”

Now she knows he’s up to something. He doesn’t play the favorite child card unless he’s trying to get something from her. “Cut the shit,” she says. “What are you after?”

“Is that really a way to talk to family? After all your mom and I sacrificed for you?”

“I don’t have time for this,” she says. “Stop trying to butter me up. Just tell me what you want or I’m going to hang up.”

“We need money.”

She thought that was probably the reason for all of this. This isn’t the first time her parents have hit her up for money. In the past, she normally handed over her paychecks because she needed to make sure her parents weren’t making Azelma and Gavroche work to pull in more money—because she knew nothing they had her siblings do would be legal—but he doesn’t have that leverage over her anymore.

“Sorry,” she says. “The bank of Eponine is closed for business.”

“It’s not even that much,” he says. “Social fucking services made the safety inspector give us a call and they’re going to shut down the motel if we can’t get a fucking gas leak fixed. A couple hundred will do it.”

“Yeah, and I need that couple hundred dollars to feed your children.”

“Don’t be such a stingy bitch,” he says. “I know social services is giving you money to look after them.”

“Believe it or not, that’s what I’m using that money for. To look after them. I know you and mom were too busy to notice, but raising kids is kind of expensive.” She doesn’t add that she thinks she’s doing a fuck-ton better job than he and her mother ever did.

“And what about that fancy boy of yours?” he says. “Your mom’s got an eye for things like that. We know he’s rich.”

“You’re not going to hit up my boyfriend for money,” she says. “You’re just going to have to figure this out yourself. You’ve never had trouble scraping together money before. If you only called for money, I’m hanging up.”

“I’m not asking for charity,” he says quickly. “There’s something I can offer you.”

He must be really desperate if he’s willing to bargain. “There’s nothing I need—or even want—from you. Goodbye.”

“Wait!” he shouts before she can hit the end call button on her phone. “You know that skinny boy that Montparnasse has been fucking all these years, right? He’s a friend of yours?”

Her stomach twists. Jehan. What could her dad possibly know about Jehan? “What about him?” she asks.

“He done something to piss off Parnasse lately?”

“They broke up months ago,” she says. “What’s this about?”

“Promise me the money, and I’ll tell you.”

Shit. She knows this is probably nothing. Her dad’s clever and he knows how to play people. He knows that she won’t risk harm to people she cares about just because she wants to screw him over. “I’ll write you a check for two hundred dollars,” she says. “But that’s all you’re getting from me. Now tell me what’s going on.”

“Just Parnasse has been a little…fidgety of late,” he says. “Word on the street says he’s scheming something up and a little birdie might have said to me that Parnasse has been bitching about his lost boy toy. Might want to keep an eye on him.”

She doesn’t clarify if he means keeping an eye on Jehan or keeping an eye on Montparnasse. It’ll probably be a better option to watch both of them.

“Right,” she says. “I’ll mail you your check in the morning.”

She hangs up before he can ask for anything more and goes back into the living room.

“What’s up?” Grantaire asks when she tosses her phone on the couch.

She drags her hand through her hair. “Might be nothing,” she says, “but my dad says Montparnasse has been acting a little shady.”

“That’s nothing new,” Grantaire says.

“He said he thinks it might have something to do with Jehan.”

Grantaire frowns. “Jehan gave Parnasse that ultimatum. I sincerely doubt he’s going to try anything and by the end of the week, Jehan’s going to hand him over to the police. He’s a neutralized threat. He’s probably just trying to get things together before he skips town.”

“I know that,” she says. “More than likely, my dad was probably just talking shit to get money out of me.” It’s not like that was a bad plan on his part. It worked, after all. “It’s just that with everything that’s happened, it’s kind of hard to give him the benefit of the doubt, you know?”

“We’ll tell Jehan and Courfeyrac to be on the guard,” Grantaire says. “And we’ll tell everyone else to keep an eye on them. Not much else we can do. Besides, Montparnasse would have to be ten different kinds of stupid to try anything now.”

“You’re probably right,” she says. She flops back on the couch and grabs her phone to text Combeferre. He’ll make sure everyone else knows to look after Jehan and Courfeyrac. Other than that, there’s nothing she can do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, for a while there, I wasn't sure I was going to get this chapter done on time, but I did despite the fact that writing some of this chapter felt like pulling teeth :D Anyway, thank you all SO MUCH for your support and general awesomeness of this fic. You're all wonderful lovely people and you never fail to brighten my day. I always love hearing from you <3
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday


	72. Chapter Seventy-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras and Grantaire go on a date

Saturday’s lunch date comes both far too slowly and far too quickly for Enjolras, and despite all the hours he’s talked Courfeyrac’s ear off in preparation for it, he’s still overcome with an unsettled sense of nervousness. Of current most concern, his hands are clammy. He keeps having to wipe them off on his jeans. What if Grantaire wants to hold his hand? (Because he kind of wants to hold his hand—at the very least he wants Grantaire to want to hold his hand even if there’s no actual hand holding involved in this date.)

“Everyone’s hands get a little sweaty, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac says from the passenger seat of the car. Enjolras is taking him to his first physical therapy appointment, though Courfeyrac has been acting like Enjolras is taking him to a torture chamber. “You don’t need to stress about it.”

“How did you know that my hands are sweaty?” he asks.

“Because I’ve watched you obsessively wipe them on your jeans whenever we stop at a red light,” he says. “And Grantaire’s not going to change his mind about you just because your hands sweat a little, now relax.”

Enjolras flexes his hands around the steering wheel. “Are you sure you don’t need me to go in with you?” he asks. “Combeferre said that it might be easier for you with moral support.”

“The only kind of support I want is a healthy dose of painkillers after this appointment,” he says. “Besides, you’re not backing out of this date. It’d crush Grantaire, and you don’t want to do that, do you?”

No, he really doesn’t. Admitting to himself and to Grantaire the exact nature of his feelings seems to have unlocked something in him. He feels this rush of…something whenever he sees Grantaire. This fluttery, nervous feeling that’s unlike anything he’s really felt before, and along with that comes this fierce desire to sort of protect Grantaire and keep him safe. It’s all very strange to Enjolras.  

“Do you really think it’d crush him if I didn’t show up?” he asks.

Courfeyrac gives him a dead-panned look. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to live this long if you’re this oblivious,” he says. “Let’s face it, Grantaire thinks you hang the moon in the sky, so you’re going to play nice this afternoon and not crush his delicate soul, yeah? Because Jehan’s birthday party is tonight and it’d be ruined if Grantaire was moping around like some sad sack because you were an idiot. Are we clear on this?”

Enjolras glares at him. “I’m not going on this date with him because I want to crush his soul,” he says. “Who do you think I am?”

“I think you’re a wonderful man who can be rather careless with his words,” he says. “Just play nice, okay? Tell Grantaire he looks handsome and if he brings you flowers, don’t tell him how much you don’t like flowers.”

Enjolras pulls into the parking lot for the health and wellness center where Courfeyrac’s physical therapy appointment is at. “I’m not completely incompetent, you know,” he says.

“In all my years of friendship with you,” Courfeyrac says, “I have learned to never underestimate what you’re capable of—and that includes how incompetent you can be.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes and parks his car in the drop off area in front of the building. Despite Courfeyrac’s many protestations that he can handle this himself, Enjolras helps him out of the car and wrestles his crutches out of the back seat.

“I can pick you up when the appointment is over,” Enjolras says. It’ll give him an excuse to get out of the date if it turns out he and Grantaire have nothing to say to each other.

Courfeyrac glares at him. “Not a chance in hell. Combeferre is going to pick me up. You’re going to go on that damnable date and you’re going to have a good time. I don’t want to see you back at our place until it’s time to set up for Jehan’s party, okay?”

“If something happens with Combeferre, though,” Enjolras says, “you’ll call me and I’ll come get you, okay?”

“Enjolras, I’m at a community health center. What sort of trouble do you think can happen to me here? I’m sure they’ve got this place rigged with cameras in case someone falls over and can’t get up or something. I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Just relax, and for the love of all that’s good in the world, have fun, okay? You’ve got this.”

Enjolras nods, feeling a little unsteady. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got this.”

Courfeyrac beams at him. “That’s the spirit,” he says. “Now go get him, tiger!”

“Don’t ever call me tiger ever again,” Enjolras says. “Are we clear on that?”

“Crystal,” he says. Just as Courfeyrac turns to head inside, a patient coming out of the building bumps into him, nearly knocking him to the ground. Enjolras is quick to brace Courfeyrac before he tumbles to the ground and he shouts after the man who bumped into Courfeyrac—and who didn’t even bother to look back to see if he was okay—but Courfeyrac just shrugs it off.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “You’ve got a date to get to.”

Enjolras does have a date to get to, but he still waits for Courfeyrac to make it safely inside before he gets back in the car and drives to Grantaire’s apartment to pick him up. On the drive over, he can’t help but wish they had arranged this date as a double date—they could have gone with Courfeyrac and Jehan or with Combeferre and Eponine, and then Enjolras would have had a safety net in case he does say something thoughtless. Not that he’s planning on saying something thoughtless, but Courfeyrac has told him on several occasions that he doesn’t often think through the emotional impact of his words and he’s terrified that he’s going to mess this all up.

When he gets to the apartment building, Enjolras takes a steadying breath before he knocks on the door to Grantaire’s apartment. (Courfeyrac said that going to the door, even when it would have been easier to have Grantaire meet him at the car because then he wouldn’t have to find a parking space, is good date etiquette.) He’s done much harder things than this before. He’s given speeches in public, he’s been arrested and roughed up by the police. Surely a single date can’t be as scary as any of those things.

But none of that abates the nervousness he feels.

Gavroche opens the door and he gives Enjolras a once over. “I suppose you’ll do,” he says before turning around and hollering to the back of the apartment, “R! Your lover boy is here!”

Enjolras feels his face flush and Eponine comes out of the kitchen to scare Gavroche off. “Don’t mind the runt,” she says. “He seems to think he’s funny these days. I blame Courfeyrac’s influence. Grantaire will be right out.”

“Great,” he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets, hoping to dry them off without attracting notice.

Eponine gives him a once over, much like her brother did, although his gaze wasn’t nearly so menacing. She meets Enjolras’s eyes. “For the record,” she says, “if you break his heart today, you’re not going to have to deal with just me, but with Jehan too—and I know Jehan’s come across like some sort of sainted pacifist in this whole mess with Montparnasse, but he doesn’t really have a problem with violence when it comes to protecting people he loves. Just keep that in mind.”

“Of course,” he says. Between her warning and Courfeyrac’s, he’s beginning to wonder if he’s earned this awful reputation that all his friends seem to have of him, but the thought is driven from his head when Grantaire emerges from the back of the apartment.

Enjolras stares. He’s seen Grantaire dressed up before—at the fundraiser just before Christmas and again at the hearing back in January for the protest that went wrong in November—but neither of those times compare to now. It isn’t as though Grantaire is suddenly more attractive or handsome or that he’s undergone some sort of great transformation, but it seems as though he put more thought and care into his appearance. His hair has been tamed a little from its normal wild curls and his clothes are neat and flattering and not covered in paint. There’s still an undefinable Grantaire-ish air about him that Enjolras loves and he takes comfort in the fact that Grantaire looks as nervous as he feels.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

Grantaire grabs a coat off the back of a kitchen chair. “Let’s go,” he says.

Once the door is shut, Grantaire immediately apologizes.

“Wait, what are you sorry for?” Enjolras asks.

“I know Eponine pulled that whole ‘you hurt him, and I’ll hurt you’ shit,” he says. “It’s just—I don’t know—she’s like my dad or something, only not, because my old man is a shithead.”

“It’s fine,” Enjolras says. “I got a similar lecture about not hurting you from Courfeyrac before I dropped him off.”

“Shouldn’t Courf be giving me the lecture about breaking _your_ heart?”

“One would assume,” he says dryly, which makes Grantaire laugh.

He likes making Grantaire laugh.

Enjolras drives them to a little soup-salad-sandwich café that Courfeyrac loves and he pays for both of them once they’ve ordered. They a share a table for two in the corner of the café and there’s something different about the tone of their conversation here. This is hardly the first time he’s been alone with Grantaire—this isn’t even the first time he’s been alone with Grantaire since he kissed him more than a week ago—but it’s different. It’s more personal. As though sensing that Enjolras really has no idea of what sort of conversations are appropriate for a first date, Grantaire leads the conversation, asking Enjolras questions about where he grew up and how he got involved in “all this social justice shit.” Both of them skirt around issues of their childhood and Enjolras knows enough of Grantaire’s past to understand why he might not want to launch a discussion about it now. Enjolras, who has never been good at small talk, manages to ask Grantaire about his art and he loves the way Grantaire’s whole face lights up when he starts talking about art and the digital piece that he’s working on for one of his classes. Enjolras really doesn’t know the first thing about art, but he could listen to Grantaire talk about it for hours he thinks.

When they’ve finished eating, Grantaire looks up nervously at him.

“I know I had said that I’d take us out for dessert or something, but I found something else that I want to take you to,” he says. “I think you’ll really like it.”

Grantaire’s mystery destination is within walking distance of the café and he holds Enjolras’s hand—Enjolras doesn’t even worry about whether or not his hands are sweaty because his chest feels oddly fluttery—as he leads the way. They end up at a small art gallery, outside of which is a sign advertising a new exhibit called “Rebels and Revolutionaries.”

“What’s this?” Enjolras asks as Grantaire holds the door open for him.

“This is an art gallery,” he says, smirking.

Enjolras rolls his eyes. “I figured that much.” Grantaire leads him into the main room of the gallery and the first thing Enjolras sees is a series of breath-taking photographs taken, as far as Enjolras can tell, at civil rights rally in the 60s. The pictures are all black-and-white, but something about the stark contrast strikes a chord with Enjolras. He steps closer so he can examine the pictures more closely. He finds himself drawn to the look of anger on a young black man’s face as he shouts for justice.

“So all the art in this exhibit is about different revolutions and social movements and the people behind them,” Grantaire says. “I talked to the curator about it, and she’s really interested in visual representations of how the outcome of history makes us see these people as revolutionaries or rebels.”

“How did you hear about this?” Enjolras asks. He leans forward to study another photograph.

“I’ve got a painting in the exhibit. It’s not nearly as impressive as some of the other stuff that’s in here.”

“I want to see it,” Enjolras says immediately.

“It’s really not that great.”

But Enjolras shakes his head. “No, no, no. I want to see it. You have to show it to me.”

Grantaire looks a little bashful. “It’s towards the back of the exhibit,” he says. “Why don’t we look at the rest of the exhibit on our way back? I don’t want you to miss anything for my sake.”

Enjolras concedes and slowly but surely they make their way through the gallery and he’s pleased at how well he’s able to pick out the different social movements and revolutions in the art. Sketches done of the Stonewall riots back in 1969, paintings of revolutions and rebellions from centuries ago—including a hauntingly beautiful painting of the barricades from France’s June Rebellion—and photographs of different rebellions from around the world. Every time he recognizes something, he eagerly turns to Grantaire to tell him about the history and the politics and how the success—or failure—of that particular movement affects them now.

Grantaire is pretty well-informed about the historical context for a lot of the art that hangs, though it doesn’t seem to instill him with the sense that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice that it does with Enjolras. But when Enjolras finishes telling him about the historical context, Grantaire follows up with information about the art movements that influenced the work and how those art movements are a reflection of the historical and political culture that they emerged from.

Enjolras had never really considered art to be an integral part of social movements before, but he sees now that he’s wrong.

Towards the end of the exhibit, Grantaire points Enjolras towards a painting along the back wall. The top half of the canvas is done almost entirely in red and the bottom half in black. The only deviation in the coloring is the silhouette of angry man who’s done in black on the top half of the canvas and reflected on the bottom half in red. For such a minimalistic piece, it’s raw and emotional. A little placard hangs beside it, which reads _Red and Black, by Grantaire_.

“This is your painting?” he asks, turning to Grantaire.

He nods. “It’s not much—”

“Are you kidding me?” Enjolras says. “This is stunning! I had no idea you could make something so emotional with only two colors.” He turns to Grantaire. “When did you do this?”

“The day after your protest in November,” Grantaire says. “After we were released from the police station. I was supposed to be resting, but I had that head injury and I couldn’t sleep so I painted instead.” He shrugs, looking self-conscious. “You don’t have to make a big deal out of it or anything.”

“I’m not blowing this out of proportion,” he says. “And I’m not just trying to flatter you. I really, _really_ like this. And the fact that you can even create something like this—I’ll draw for you sometime and you can mock my stick figures and you’ll see how little artistic ability I possess. But this…this makes people feel things, Grantaire, and sometimes I can do that with words but most of the time, I’m just being ignored.” He gestures towards the painting. “You can’t ignore something like this.”

Grantaire smiles shyly at him and reaches out to take his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday, folks. I hope this chapter of pure fluff will brighten your day :) Thanks so much for all the kudos/comments/support you all have shown me. You're wonderful. There's only five more chapters left to this mammoth and as I'm finishing up the writing, I always think about how lovely you all are and how supportive you've been and then I get all misty eyed, because I'm a sap.
> 
> Anyway, the next chapter will be up next Tuesday <3
> 
> P.S. Apologies to those of you who are author subscribed and may have gotten an email alert about a fic that accidentally got posted in the middle of the night last night. I deleted it as soon as I noticed it'd gotten posted, so the link in the email will take you nowhere. For interested persons, the actual version of that fic will go live a week from tomorrow.


	73. Chapter Seventy-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which my streak of happy chapters comes to an end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: violence, threatening language

In the end, Courfeyrac decides that physical therapy is actual hell and the ten-year-old in the therapy room with him—recovering from a torn ACL—assured him that it was only going to get worse.

Today was just weight bearing exercises. He never even took the brace off his knee. Literally all the physical therapists had him doing was trying to ease his body weight onto his right leg. It was glorified standing and it wasn’t something that sounded hard, but now that it’s over, Courfeyrac is tired and cranky and in pain. The physical therapist recommended lots of sleep and a hot bath tonight and he wonders if he can fit that in before Jehan’s birthday party tonight.

Because he will be at Jehan’s party tonight. That is 100% non-negotiable to him. You don’t miss your boyfriend’s birthday party. (Thinking of Jehan as his boyfriend, even if their friends don’t know that they’re officially official yet, fills him with an unearthly sort of glee and helps him forget the pain, even if it’s just for a little while.) He doesn’t care if he’s hopped up on painkillers the whole night or if he has to saw his leg off entirely to be there (which, to be honest, sounds like a pretty good idea at this point because surely his knee can’t hurt this much if it’s not attached to his body).

Outside the health center, Courfeyrac eases himself down onto a bench. It’s a nice day out, especially considering how miserable the winter has been, and the chilled air feels nice against his flushed skin. He feels like he can breathe easier out here, even if it is all just in his head.

He had hoped that Combeferre would have be here by the time he was done with his appointment, especially considering he got out of the appointment a little late. But the only car in the pick-up/drop-off area is an old mid-sized junker with tinted windows, which has been waiting for at least as long as Courfeyrac has.

It’s not long before the chilled air starts feeling unpleasant instead of refreshing and he pats down his pockets for his phone so he can call Combeferre and find out where he is. He checks and double checks when he can’t find his phone because he could have sworn he had it in his hoodie pocket before he left the apartment. He frowns. He’d taken off his sweatshirt inside. Maybe his phone had fallen out then.

Despite the fact that he was rather hoping to never be required to move again, he hauls himself to his feet and grabs his crutches so he can hobble back inside to check for his phone.

He will be _so_ glad when he no longer has to depend on the crutches to get around. Limited mobility does not suit him.

He’s about to head inside when the waiting car rolls its windows down and a hand waves him over. He sighs. It’s probably someone needing directions or something and his mother raised him to help strangers no matter how much he doesn’t want to at the moment. He hobbles over and the man in the passenger’s seat looks familiar, but Courfeyrac can’t place his face.

“Looking for something?” the man says.

He holds up Courfeyrac’s cell phone, identifiable by the lightning bolt crack down the screen from when Bossuet dropped it two months ago.

Courfeyrac feels his insides go cold. Babet. That’s the man’s name. Fuck. Courfeyrac remembers his face from the night he and Jehan were attacked. How the hell did he get his cell phone? He remembers someone bumping into him when Enjolras dropped him off. It could have easily been Babet. His brain kicks in a moment later, reminding him that it’s probably not a good idea to linger here, and he reels back, cursing when he’s forced to put weight on his bad leg.

“Not so fast,” Babet says. In his other hand, he raises a gun and he points it right at Courfeyrac’s belly.

_Fuck_.

“I think you want to get in the car,” Babet says.

Courfeyrac glances over his shoulder. Surely this place has security cameras or something—vaguely he remembers making a joke with Enjolras about the security cameras when he was dropped off earlier—but there’s nothing  and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do because he knows he can’t outrun a fucking bullet even if both his legs were fully functional.

Montparnasse leans across from the driver’s seat. “Now, pretty boy,” he says. His tone leaves no room for argument. “We both know I have no qualms with shooting you now and we have a schedule to keep.”

Courfeyrac can’t move and his lungs seem to be malfunctioning because he can’t really breathe either. He can’t run, but he knows he can’t get in that car. He knows it won’t end well. He needs help. He can call for help. Someone inside will hear him. Someone will come help him.

As soon as he opens his mouth, though, Babet cocks the gun. The message is clear. Shout and he’ll be shot. At this range, he doesn’t doubt that it would be fatal. Not knowing what else to do, Courfeyrac opens the back door of the car and almost immediately he’s yanked unceremoniously inside. He recognizes Gueulemer in the backseat, but before Courfeyrac can offer up any sort of protest or resistance, Gueulemer strikes out at a pressure point and Courfeyrac knows darkness.

* * *

 

Courfeyrac wakes up and his knee is on fire and his head pounds. He groans and tries to shift into a more comfortable position, only he can’t seem to move.

Right.

He remembers the car and Montparnasse and his friends and the gun and when he opens his eyes, he finds that he’s in on the floor in the back of the car, his hips and shoulders wedged between the backseat and the driver’s seat with his legs stretched out in front of him. His hands are bound in front of him with zip ties and it’s tight enough that his hands are starting to turn red.

Gueulemer is in the backseat on the passenger’s side and he’s using his feet to keep Courfeyrac’s legs in place. Courfeyrac is sure that the pressure the mountain of a man is putting on his right leg isn’t accidental.

But he won’t cry out. He won’t whine. He won’t give these men the satisfaction.

He shifts his shoulders, trying to get a little more comfortable and to see if he could see anything in the front of the car. He can make out a little of Babet in the passenger’s seat, but he can’t see Montparnasse in the front seat at all. He knows they’re driving—he can feel every speed bump and pothole they hit—but when he cranes his neck, he can’t see any identifiable features out of the window.

Shit.

He swallows and licks his lips and summons his nerve. “Where are you taking me?” he demands.

Or at least, he tries to demand. He’s well-aware that fear has mangled his voice.

Gueulemer presses his foot down on Courfeyrac’s leg, making him yelp, and Babet turns around in his seat.

“Keep your mouth shut,” he says.

Courfeyrac has never been one for following orders and talking might distract him from the sickening pain in his leg. If Gueulemer rebroke his leg, he’s going to murder someone.

Assuming he’ll survive this encounter.

He shoves that utterly unhelpful thought out of his head. “What’s your endgame here?” he asks. “You going to beat me up and rape me and leave me in an alley like you did all those sex workers? My friends’ll go straight to the police when they realize I’m missing. They’re going to know it’s you. You can’t honestly think you’re going to get away with any of this.”

Of course, as soon as the words are out of his mouth, he realizes that Montparnasse and his cronies probably already know that and that doesn’t bode well for him. They haven’t made any attempt to hide themselves from him, and he’s not blindfolded so he can, theoretically, see where they’re taking him.

Neither of those things suggest that they plan on letting him out of this alive.

Fuck.

“We said to keep your fucking mouth shut, pretty boy,” Montparnasse says from the front seat.

His voice makes Courfeyrac shiver, but he ignores the feeling. If Montparnasse is planning on killing him, he’s going to make the son of a bitch work for it and he’s going to fight every step of the way. He’s not going to let Montparnasse ruin what he and Jehan have, not after it’s taken them so long to get here. Montparnasse can go fuck himself.

“Pretty boy?” Courfeyrac says. “Is that what this is about? Jealousy? If anything, Montparnasse, I’d say that you’re prettier than me, although it’s hard to tell since you never smile. A little attitude adjustment would go a long way for you.”

“Kick him, Gueulemer,” Montparnasse says.

Courfeyrac has the briefest second to brace himself before Gueulemer stomps his boot down on Courfeyrac’s groin. He doubles forward, groaning, as pain explodes through his abdomen. These fuckers play dirty. He shouldn’t be surprised.

“Jehan didn’t leave you for me because I’m prettier than you,” he forces out through gritted teeth. “Jehan dumped your ass because you’re an abusive shithead and I don’t think that grabbing me off the fucking street is winning you any points.”

“Don’t you fucking say his name.”

“That’s what this is, isn’t it?” Courfeyrac says. “You can’t get over the fact that you ruined the best thing that ever happened to you and now you’re…Fuck. Now you’re going all _Phantom of the Opera_ on us.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“ _Phantom of the Opera_ ,” he says. “You’ve grabbed me to make him come back to you. I’m Raoul in your fucking little game here and I’m supposed to be all ‘don’t make him lie to you to save me,’ but you know what? It’s not going to work. Jehan’s stronger than this. He doesn’t need or even want your sorry ass anymore and you can deal with that like a fucking adult or you can—”

He cuts off when Montparnasse slams on the breaks and grabs the gun from Babet. He turns in his seat and points it at Courfeyrac.

“One more word out of you and I will blow your fucking brain out.”

His hand is steady and his voice is cool. He’s not bluffing.

Courfeyrac nods.

Montparnasse tosses the gun back to Gueulemer. “Shoot him if he tries anything,” he says and starts driving again.

The rest of the car trip is silent and Courfeyrac doesn’t dare make a sound. Gueulemer looks far too eager to shoot someone and he’s not going to offer himself up. Antagonizing Montparnasse was invigorating and it distracted him from the pain in his body, but it obviously wasn’t the smartest idea he’s ever made. And he needs to play this smart. He needs to get out of this alive because he needs to see Jehan again and he needs to have a happily ever after because that’s the best sort of revenge against this son of a bitch.

His friends will know that he’s missing soon. Combeferre was supposed to pick him up from the health center—and even if Montparnasse got around that somehow, Jehan’s birthday party is due to start soon. Once everyone’s the apartment, they’ll notice he’s gone. They’ll call the police. And his friends are smart. With everything that’s happened, they’ll suspect that Montparnasse is involved and Enjolras and Combeferre aren’t going to abide by any of that “persons need to be missing for twenty-four hours before a missing person report can be filed” shit and Jehan…Jehan said just the other day that he knows far more about Montparnasse’s criminal activities than he let on. Jehan might even know where he’s being taken and he’ll give that information over to the police and Courfeyrac can spend the rest of his life with Jehan making jokes about how Jehan is the white knight who gave relevant information to the police so the police could save him.

He just has to last that long.

Eventually, Montparnasse pulls the car over and Courfeyrac cranes his neck to see out the window, trying to get any indication of where he’s been taken. All he can see is the side of a building. Montparnasse and Babet get out of the car and a moment later, the door behind Courfeyrac gives way and he slumps backwards. Looking up, he can see Montparnasse behind him. He wants to ask where they are and what they’re planning on doing to him, but he suspects the ban on speaking is still in place and Gueulemer still has that gun. He keeps silent.

Montparnasse secures a blindfold over his eyes, and the sudden lack of sight makes Courfeyrac feel all the more vulnerable. He’s pretty sure he’s shaking and fear is an icy hand that claws its way through him.

Montparnasse orders Gueulemer to get Courfeyrac out of the car and inside—he wishes he knew inside where—but before Gueulemer can manhandle him out of the car, Montparnasse leans in close to Courfeyrac to whisper in his ear. “You make a sound,” he says, “or you put up a fight, and I’ll shoot you through the head and send a video of it to everyone in your contact list. You understand?”

Courfeyrac nods and a moment later he’s wrestled from the car. He bites his tongue so hard he can taste blood in his mouth to keep from crying out when his bad leg is jostled. He doubts Montparnasse will excuse involuntary noises of pain. Once out of the car, Gueulemer grips him by the hair to steer him along. He can barely walk, his knee sending spikes of agony through his body with every step, and when they reach a staircase, Gueulemer has to practically drag Courfeyrac up it by his hair. Eventually—Courfeyrac has lost all sense of time from the pain in his leg—he’s shoved to the ground. He scrambles back as best he can with bound hands and a broken leg. He just knows he wants, needs to put as much distance between himself and everyone else as he can. He doesn’t care that his face is stained with tears of pain, nor does he care that he must look pathetic and helpless as he scrambles across the floor. He just wants to get away.

When he hears the click of a gun, though, he freezes.

Montparnasse laughs. “Someone’s learning quickly,” he says.

He hears footsteps moving closer to him and he tries to take a deep breath, tries to steady himself. He’s still unprepared for the fist that slams into his face. Warm blood drips from his nose towards his mouth and mingles with the tears on his face.

He feels a hand wipe the blood across his face.

“Gotta get you ready for the pictures I’m about to send,” Montparnasse says. “I need to let my bird know I’m serious about this.”

Before Courfeyrac can process what Montparnasse could possibly mean by taking pictures, pain and violence descends. He can’t keep track of the hands that grab at him and hit him, nor can he keep track of the feet that kick at him. As soon as the beating started though, it stops.

The only thing Courfeyrac can hear is the sound of his own labored breathing.

Cold metal brushes against his cheek and prods at his mouth. He can only assume it’s the barrel of the gun. He tries to move away, but someone grabs his hair and holds him in place.

“Tell me, pretty boy,” Montparnasse says, pressing the gun to Courfeyrac’s mouth. “Do you kiss my bird with these lips?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope we can all still be friends even after I've inflicted this chapter one you.
> 
> Thank you all SO MUCH for your support and comments and kudos and general awesomeness. You're all wonderful. Seriously. Anyone who says otherwise can come talk to me.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday.


	74. Chapter Seventy-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Amis discover that Courfeyrac is missing

Grantaire feels like he’s floating when they get back to Enjolras’s apartment to help set up for Jehan’s birthday party. Never in even his wildest dreams did he imagine that (1) he’d ever go on a real date with Enjolras or (2) that it would go so _flawlessly_. He had suspected that Enjolras would find the art gallery moderately interesting, but he had no idea that Enjolras would be so taken with it—and it wasn’t just the subject matter. Enjolras had seemed legitimately interested in the art…and in Grantaire.

He’s not sure he’s ever felt like this before, and there’s a part of him (an obnoxiously large part, actually) that’s convinced that this can’t last or that it was some sort of fluke or cosmic joke, but every time he looks at Enjolras he realizes he doesn’t care if everything is going to hell in a hand basket. Rome can burn down around him. The chance to be with Enjolras now is worth that to him.

As they unpack the decorations—hand-selected and purchased by Courfeyrac and Grantaire is a little surprised at how well Courf knows Jehan’s tastes—they make plans for a second date for the following weekend. Grantaire hopes that on that date they’ll progress beyond hand holding and that maybe he’ll get another chance to kiss Enjolras.

“Courfeyrac should be here by now,” Enjolras says, checking the time on his phone he unpacks the party supplies from a brown paper bag.

“He’s probably talked Combeferre into doing some last minute shopping or something,” Grantaire says. “He probably decided that we need more cake. Or maybe some Boston cream pie. Jehan does love Boston cream pie.”

“There’s already one the fridge,” Enjolras says. “Courf insisted we went out last night to get it.”

Grantaire snorts. “Should we be concerned at how well your best friend seems to know my best friend?”

Enjolras shakes his head. “Courfeyrac knows everyone this well,” he says. “Do you really think he’d throw someone a birthday party without knowing what their favorite dessert is?”

“Fair enough,” Grantaire concedes.

He looks up when he hears the door open, but instead of seeing Courfeyrac or Combeferre, he sees Jehan.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Get out. You’re not allowed to help set up your own birthday party, Jehan.”

Jehan just smiles. “Is Courfeyrac in?”

Grantaire shakes his head. “We think he’s doing last minute errands with Combeferre,” he says.

“Courfeyrac likes to make a big deal out of birthdays,” Enjolras adds. “I hope you’re prepared for that.”

“Courf knows what I like,” he says. “You don’t mind if I wait around, do you? I can help set up, even.”

“Did you miss what I said about not setting up for your own party?” Grantaire says. “Don’t think I forgot that you’ve had to make your own birthday cakes from the time you were fifteen.”

Enjolras looks alarmed. “My parents are hardly what you’d call doting, but they never made me make my own cake.”

“It’s not that they made me,” Jehan says. “It’s just if I wanted a cake…well, no one else was going to make it if I didn’t.” He grins. “But I’ve been promised a Boston cream pie this year and you can bet I’m taking the lion’s share.”

“Go ahead and make yourself comfortable,” Grantaire says, not caring that this isn’t his apartment and that he probably shouldn’t be making invitations like that. “You can keep us company while we set up, but I’m returning your present if you try to help.”

Jehan laughs as he shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on the coat rack near the door.

“Nice sweater,” Grantaire says, his lips twitching.

Jehan smooths his hands over it with pride. The sweater is bubble gum pink decorated with white and grey sheep. Or maybe they’re short llamas. Grantaire isn’t certain. “You like it? My parents wired some money into my account for my birthday this morning. My dad—well, he told me not to buy anything ‘too gay’ but my mom told me to buy something I’d like.”

“It’s very you,” Grantaire says. “Just don’t let your dad see it.”

“I don’t plan on seeing him at all,” Jehan says, flopping down on the couch. He grabs a book off the coffee table and starts thumbing through it.

Grantaire pauses for a moment to watch Jehan. In the last week or so, Jehan’s been happier than Grantaire has seen him in months. In fact, this might be the happiest he’s ever seen Jehan, because while Jehan’s affinity for melancholy rarely spiraled out of control like Grantaire’s did, there was usually a lingering sense of sadness behind Jehan’s eyes, even when he smiled and laughed. Grantaire had always attributed that to Jehan’s home life and his relationship with his dad, but now he’s beginning to wonder if it had more to do with the company he kept. He hadn’t known Jehan all that long before he introduced him to Montparnasse, who was the center of Jehan’s social life for years now.

But in the last month or so, Jehan has been spending more and more time with Courfeyrac and their other friends and in the last week, he and Courfeyrac have been practically joined at the hip and that lingering sadness in Jehan’s eyes isn’t anywhere to be found now.

And that’s how Grantaire wants it.

Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta arrive not long after Jehan and they come with a bright, floral print gift bag, which Grantaire quickly relieves them of before Jehan can reach for it.

“What?” Jehan says, pouting. “I’m not even allowed to _hold_ my birthday present?”

“It’s a gift bag,” Grantaire says. “Don’t pretend that you wouldn’t peak.”

“It’s my birthday,” Jehan says. “I can peak if I want to.”

“I’m putting this with the other presents,” Grantaire says, and he walks to Courfeyrac’s bedroom where the few other presents are stacked neatly on Courfeyrac’s bed. Once he’s deposited the present, he turns and finds that Joly and Bossuet both followed him back here.

“So?” Joly says.

Grantaire looks at him. “So…what?”

Bossuet rolls his eyes. “The date,” he says. “How’d it go?”

“Did you hold his hand?” Joly asks. “Did he kiss you? Did you kiss him?”

“What do the two of you care?”

“I’m going to guess that’s a _no_ on the kissing,” Bossuet says.

“Shame,” Joly says. “That puts them behind Jehan and Courf, doesn’t it?”

“Behind on what?” Grantaire asks.

They ignore him.

“That depends,” Bossuet says. “Is it more couple-y to go on an actual date with each other or to kiss each other?”

“I’m going to have to go with date on this one,” Joly says. He turns and smiles at Grantaire. “Congrats,” he says. “You and Enjolras are in the lead.”

“Please don’t tell me that there’s some sort of betting pool on whether Enjolras and I or Courfeyrac and Jehan are getting together first,” he says.

Bossuet shrugs. “Okay. We won’t tell.”

Grantaire groans and rolls his eyes. “Don’t you two have a girlfriend to entertain?”

They laugh and Joly says, “Don’t think that we’re going to be the only ones asking questions. Bahorel has a nice chunk of change riding on this.”

“You all need better hobbies,” he says, walking back out to the main room.

“Admit it,” Bossuet calls after him. “You like it!”

Back in the main room, Jehan and Musichetta are sitting on the couch together while Enjolras is hanging the last of the streamers Courfeyrac had bought.

“Cosette texted,” Jehan says. “She and Marius are on their way over, and Chetta says that Bahorel’s picking Feuilly up from work, so they’ll be here in another twenty minutes or so. All we need is for Combeferre and Eponine and Courf to show up, and then I can open my presents, right?”

“How old are you?” Grantaire asks. “Five?”

“Why shouldn’t I be excited about presents?” Jehan asks. “Gift giving is a wonderful tradition and I refuse to let you make me feel ashamed about being excited over it.”

Grantaire is about to give a mocking lecture about the commercialism of birthdays—and gift-giving in general—when the door opens, admitting Combeferre, Eponine, and her siblings.

Jehan frowns as he greets them. “Is Courfeyrac not with you?”

“Why would Courf be with us?” Eponine asks.

“You were supposed to pick him up from his physical therapy appointment,” Enjolras says.

“He texted me to say that you picked him up,” Combeferre says, fishing his phone out of his pocket. He finds the message and hands the phone off to Enjolras.

“I didn’t pick him up,” Enjolras says. Grantaire can hear the worry in his voice. “I haven’t heard from him since I dropped him off.”

“I’m going to call him,” Jehan says.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Combeferre says. “He probably got a cab to go get something last minute for the party. You know how he is about birthdays.”

“But why would he lie to you about that?” Enjolras asks. “It’s not like he’s trying to surprise _you_.”

“He’s not answering his phone,” Jehan says. He dials again.

Grantaire doesn’t miss the worried look that passes between Eponine and her siblings.

“You don’t think this has anything to do with what dad was saying the other day, do you?” Azelma asks.

“What was your dad saying?” Enjolras asks.

“Apparently Parnasse is up to something,” Gavroche says before Grantaire can tell him to keep his mouth shut.

Jehan’s face goes white.

“No no no,” Jehan says. “You don’t think he—he can’t—not Courfeyrac—not—”

Grantaire takes him by the shoulder. “We don’t know anything yet,” he says. “Montparnasse would have to be an idiot to do something to Courfeyrac. He’s too rich and he’s too well-connected and Montparnasse knows all of that.”

“He’d do something if he was desperate,” Eponine says. “And he knows Jehan’s handing him over to the police on Monday. He’s got a lot to be desperate about.”

“But that’s exactly why he _wouldn’t_ try anything,” Grantaire says.

“I don’t like this,” Jehan says.

“Maybe,” Combeferre says, “we should call the police. There’s probably not anything to worry about, but they might be able to offer some advice.”

Enjolras pulls out his phone to dial 911.

“I think I’m going to call Mont,” Jehan says.

“Jehan, don’t,” Grantaire says. He has no idea what’s really going on here, has no idea if Courfeyrac has been abducted or mugged again or what, but he does know that he wants Jehan as far from Montparnasse as humanly possible. If Montparnasse is so desperate that he’d hurt Courfeyrac, Grantaire doesn’t want to think about what he’d do to Jehan.

Jehan, of course, ignores him.

Meanwhile, Enjolras is already on the phone with the police. “Yes, I’d like to report a missing person.” He pauses, frowning. “Look, I know he needs to be missing for more than a day, but you need to make an exception. He—” Anger flashes across his face. “He’s already got a serious injury and he’s involved with someone who recently go out of an abusive relationship and we have _every reason_ to believe that his partner’s ex might try to hurt him, so will you please do your job and send the police over here so we can find him before he fucking—she hung up on me. The operator fucking hung up on me.”

Jehan looks up from his phone. He looks like he’s about to be sick. “Montparnasse isn’t picking up his phone either.”

“We just need to keep calm,” Combeferre says. “Joly, will you get ahold of Bahorel and have him swing by the health center to see if something happened? Courfeyrac might still be there. And Eponine can call Cosette and Marius and have them stop by Courf’s old place and the Musain and some of his usual haunts. Until we can get the police involved, we’re just going to have to handle this ourselves. We’ll find him.”

Enjolras immediately tries to call Courfeyrac’s phone again and Eponine tells Azelma to call Cosette because there are other calls she could be making. Grantaire knows that she still has old friends who buy drugs and stolen goods off Montparnasse all the time and they might have an idea of what he’s up to or at least where they might find him.

Jehan tries to call Montparnasse again and Grantaire hands his phone over to Gavroche so he can call his dad to see if there’s any more information available as to what Montparnasse has been planning in the last week.

Enjolras tries calling Courfeyrac two more times before giving up and he and Combeferre start drafting up lists of contacts they have and favors they’re owed to see if they can get the police involved any quicker.

When Enjolras’s phone buzzes, Enjolras checks the screen and his face lights up. “It’s Courfeyrac,” he says, relieved. He unlocks the screen to view a picture message.

“Let me see,” Jehan says, reaching for the phone.

Grantaire manages to snatch the phone away from just in time. The picture on Enjolras’s phone isn’t anything Jehan needs to see. Hell, it’s not something he needs see. Courfeyrac’s face is bloodied and he’s blindfolded and there’s a gun pressed against his cheek. He takes his phone back from Gavroche and hands it to Enjolras.

“Call the police again,” he says, discreetly showing him the picture while shielding Jehan from it.

Enjolras swears under his breath and dials 911.

“Let me see it, R,” Jehan says.

“This isn’t something you need to see,” he says.

“What is it? A message? A picture? Let me see the phone!”

Grantaire holds the phone out of Jehan’s reach. “You don’t want to see it, Jehan. Trust me. We’ll take—”

He’s cut off when Jehan’s phone starts buzzing. Terrified that it’ll be another picture, he lunges for the phone, but Jehan is quicker and he dances out of Grantaire’s reach and opens the message. His face pales and he drops his phone on the table, exposing another picture of Courfeyrac. This one’s different than the message that was sent to Enjolras. Courfeyrac is still blindfolded and his face his still bloodied, but this picture is a full body shot that shows someone kicking Courfeyrac’s ribs.

Joly picks the phone off the table. “Holy fuck.”

“We’ve got another picture,” Grantaire tells Enjolras.

“Jehan, your phone is buzzing again,” Joly says. “It’s another message from Courfeyrac.”

“Give it here,” Grantaire says, but Jehan snatches it from him.

“It’s my phone,” he hisses. “And Courfeyrac is my boyfriend and I need to know what’s happening to him.”

Grantaire, Joly, and Combeferre gather round to look at the latest message. It’s another picture, this one a close up of Courfeyrac’s bloodied and tear-stained face, which is scrunched up in pain.

“I’ll call Bahorel back and let him know what’s going on,” Joly says, taking a step back and looking a little ill himself.           

Enjolras is still on the phone with the police—he seems to be making more headway now that they have these pictures—and while he still looks worried, he’s better off now that he’s actually _doing_ something.

Combeferre sits with Jehan—his phone has buzzed again—and Grantaire sits down with Eponine to look over the list of places where Montparnasse might be, hoping that he’ll have some helpful insight to contribute.

Within a half hour, Marius, Cosette, Bahorel, and Feuilly have all arrived and Combeferre suggests that they get people out to canvas the area, suspecting that Montparnasse and Courfeyrac can’t be too far away considering Courfeyrac’s physical therapy appointment only ended an hour before they started getting the pictures. With traffic in this part of the city always being miserable, they can have only gotten so far. Combeferre gives everyone strict orders to do nothing more than scout out various locations. It’s too dangerous to get involved with Montparnasse and who knows what he’ll do to Courfeyrac if he feels trapped. But if they can find where Montparnasse and Courfeyrac are, then they can send the police in that direction once they get here.

And, judging from the look of determination on Enjolras’s face, Grantaire has no doubt that the police will be involved.

He glances across the room and sees Jehan sitting alone at the kitchen table with his phone. He’s been frighteningly quiet since the first pictures have come in, and Grantaire doesn’t know what he can possibly do to make this better, but he fixes Jehan some tea and sits down next to him.

“Are you okay?” he asks. He knows it’s a stupid question, but he wants to get Jehan talking.

“I’ve been getting new pictures about every five minutes,” he says. “Sometimes less than that.” He frowns as his phone lights up, alerting them to a new message. Jehan opens the picture—unsurprisingly another picture of Courfeyrac, who is clearly in pain. “These are meant for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s trying to get me to react. He’s trying to get me to come.”

“Which is why you need to stay here,” Grantaire says. “Now that we’re getting pictures, the police are going to come and they’re going to find him, but you know the most about where Montparnasse might be, so you need to stay put so you can help the police when they get here, okay? Courfeyrac needs you here to help him.”

Jehan nods.

Grantaire leans in and presses a kiss to Jehan’s temple. “It’s going to be okay.”

Jehan’s fingers brush over Courfeyrac’s face in the latest picture. “He’s got to be so scared.”

“He’ll know that we’re looking for him,” Grantaire says, and he knows it’s true because Courfeyrac places complete faith in his friends.

“I did this to him.”

“No,” Grantaire says firmly. “Montparnasse did this to him. You understand that, right?”

“But Mont never would have done this if it weren’t for me,” he says. “If I hadn’t broken up with him, if I hadn’t fallen in love with Courf—I’m the reason he’s gone after him.”

“Listen to me, Jehan,” he says. “This was Montparnasse’s choice and it was his decision. He’s been losing it for months now—from hitting you to attacking and killing those sex workers to kidnapping Courfeyrac now—those are all things that he’s responsible for, not you. And nothing you’ve done or possibly could do puts you at fault for any of this. Courfeyrac knows that. He’s not going to blame you for this once we get him out of there, and he’d only be upset to know that you think he would. Tell me you understand that.”

“I understand,” Jehan says, but Grantaire’s not convinced. He’s about to push the subject because the last thing he wants now is for Jehan to do some stupid self-sacrificing martyr thing to protect Courfeyrac, but Eponine calls him over before he can push the subject.

He caresses Jehan’s head as he leaves to talk with Eponine in the living room. She’s narrowed down her list of places Montparnasse might have taken Courfeyrac and she wants a second opinion on it.

“I’m down to five,” she says, looking up at him. Instead of looking worried or scared, she looks fiercely determined. “What do you think?”

He recognizes a few of the locations on the list, places where Montparnasse was known to do drug deals or store stolen goods, but he has no idea if any of these are places where he and Courfeyrac might be.

“I have no idea,” he admits. “How many cars do we have between us?”

“Enjolras and Combeferre each have a car, and then Bahorel and Cosette.”

“That’s four cars and five places,” he says. He looks across the room to Enjolras, who’s still one the phone. “When are the police going to get here?” he asks him.

Enjolras holds up one hand and flashes it twice to indicate ten minutes.

“It’s not much of a head start,” he says, looking back to Eponine, “but it’s something.”

She nods. “Bahorel and Feuilly and Marius and Cosette are already out looking. I’ll call to let them know where to go.”

 The police arrive within the promised ten minutes and Grantaire is relieved that they can hand this over to people who can actually _do_ something about it. He doesn’t expect that waiting with this lot will be a particularly enjoyable experience, but he trusts the police to be able to handle this better than they can.

Enjolras talks with the officers when they arrive, re-explaining the situation and the pictures they’ve been getting.

“When did the first picture come in?” one of the officers asks.

“Let me check my phone,” Enjolras says. He pulls a phone out of his pockets, but it’s Grantaire’s phone. He frowns. “Grantaire, you last had my phone, didn’t you?”

Grantaire checks his pockets and then looks to the kitchen, thinking perhaps it’s on the table or the counter, and then he swears.

Enjolras’s phone isn’t the only thing that’s missing.

Jehan has vanished as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone still with me? I haven't driven you off with angst or feels? Good, good. We are _so_ close to the end, folks. It's exciting and sad for me. Thanks so much to everyone who commented or kudos'ed--you always make my day a little brighter :D
> 
> Next chapter will be up on FRIDAY. (Yay for Friday chapters!)


	75. Chapter Seventy-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan tries to find Courfeyrac

Normally, the fact that Jehan doesn’t know how to drive doesn’t bother him. As far as cities go, New York is pretty pedestrian friendly and while the public transit system isn’t the classiest, it’s at least economical. Besides, he rarely has to go anywhere that he can’t get on foot or on bike.

Now, though, now he regrets not knowing how to drive, because he knows where Montparnasse took Courfeyrac and he knows how to get there…but he doesn’t know the address, nor is he able to even identify what street it’s on. But he knows what part of town it’s in and he knows what it looks like and he desperately hopes that his combination of bike riding, subway hopping, and running gets him there in time.

And he needs to get there in time. Along with the pictures Mont has been spamming his phone with, Mont has been sending him text messages. Demands for Jehan to come. Threats against Courfeyrac if he doesn’t. Jehan knows when to take Montparnasse’s threats seriously. He knows that vague, watch-your-back threats are just meant to intimidate, but Mont telling him specifically that he’s going to shoot Courfeyrac through the head and upload video of it online or that he’s going to gang rape “the pretty boy whore” for daring to touch or kiss Jehan—those are serious threats. Those are threats that Montparnasse has every intent of following-through on. And those are the threats that Jehan—and only Jehan—can prevent from happening.

Jehan thinks he made the right decision not to show those messages too Grantaire or any of the others. They would have made him stay in the apartment and they’d have made him show the messages to the police.

And while getting the police involved is certainly a wise course of action, Jehan knows that Courfeyrac will be dead the moment Montparnasse hears a police siren.

Jehan’s trek across town takes him longer than he would have liked and the only comfort he has is that he hasn’t gotten a single new text from Montparnasse since he left Enjolras’s apartment. Jehan had sent him a message which simple read _I’m coming_ and he hopes that the radio silence from Mont now means that Courfeyrac is safe.

He just wants Courfeyrac to be safe. He just wants to walk out of this mess with both him and Courfeyrac alive.

He hopes it’s not too much to ask for.

Jehan recognizes the building at once when he sees it, and he takes heart when he sees Babet’s battered car parked out front. He sighs with relief, because before now, he wasn’t even sure he was headed to the right place. There were enough details in the pictures of Courfeyrac that made Jehan _think_ this was the place, but until now, he wasn’t certain.

In front of him is a large, abandoned warehouse. Montparnasse and his friends have been using it for years to store drugs and stolen goods and, on occasion, as a place to host raucous parties. Jehan’s been here at least a dozen times before now. During his junior and senior years of high school, when Montparnasse would shuttle him into the city at least once a week to see Grantaire, they’d almost always stop here for Mont to drop something off or pick something up. This was the place where he’d first tried ecstasy at a party that Montparnasse had thrown. It was the place where the two of them had made out for the first time and it’d very nearly been the place where they first had sex.

There is history in this warehouse and it makes sense to Jehan that Mont would come here now.

When he spots the building number on the side of the building, he pulls out Enjolras’s phone, which he’d swiped before sneaking out of the house. For his plan to have any hope of working, he needed two phones. He dials the phone and waits as it rings.

“Nine-one-one,” the operator on the other line says. “What’s your emergency?”

He rattles off the newly acquired address first. A lesson learned from his over-protective mother. Give the address first especially when you’re on a cell phone so the operator can immediately dispatch the police to you. “I saw a crime happening. Some people dragged an injured man in the building. He looked young, in his twenties, and he had dark curly hair. I think they mean to kill him.”

“Sir, did you say someone is going to be killed?” the operator says. “How do you know?”

Jehan doesn’t answer.

Instead, he hangs up the phone. The police will be here soon enough—with Enjolras harassing the police about Courfeyrac being missing, there’s no way they’d ignore a call like this. Not when he’s given them Courfeyrac’s description. He just needs to make sure that Courfeyrac stays alive long enough for the police to arrive.

He throws Enjolras’s phone in the bushes and walks inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry(notsorry) this chapter is so short! I feel like I'm being incredibly mean to you all but I couldn't resist the dramatic effect of a short chapter like this and at least I didn't make you wait a full week for it! Please don't kill me!)
> 
> Thank you all SO MUCH for the comments and kudos and awesomeness. You're all lovely.
> 
> Next chapter will be up on Tuesday! (And I swear that chapter is a proper length, folks)


	76. Chapter Seventy-Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter

Unsurprisingly, Mont is waiting for him. Jehan didn’t have any delusions about that. As soon as he’s inside, someone—he thinks Babet, but maybe it’s Claquesous, whoever it is is much too small to be Gueulemer—grabs him from behind, shoves a bag over his head, loops a zip tie around his hands to bind them in front of him, and leads him through the building. All of it’s a bit much, he feels. If Mont really has any expectation that Jehan is leaving willingly with him at the end of this debacle, he should know that this isn’t the way to go about it.

He’s led up some stairs—he wonders if this building has an elevator or if they made Courfeyrac handle the stairs on his broken knee—and through some halls. He doesn’t know if Mont picked a deliberately obscure room tucked away in the back of the building or if he’s being led in circles. It doesn’t matter. When he finds Mont, he’ll find Courfeyrac.

He figures he has about ten or fifteen minutes before the police arrive. He can stall for that long.

When he’s finally jerked to a halt, everything is quiet. Jehan strains to hear any indication that he’s with Courfeyrac now.

“I knew you’d come,” Mont says.

Jehan turns in his direction. “Was the bag really necessary?” he asks. “Where’s Courfeyrac?”

“Someone’s demanding,” he says. “Babet, search him.”

He tries not to flinch when he feels Babet’s hands on him but Babet is gruff and Jehan still isn’t comfortable with people touching him aggressively. He feels Babet pull his cell phone and wallet out of his pocket and a moment later, the hands are gone. Sick of playing along, Jehan yanks the bag off his head in time to see Babet toss his phone to Mont.

“I didn’t call anyone,” he says as Mont checks his messages and out-going calls. There was a reason he’d use Enjolras’s phone to call the police. “You know I know better than that. Now where’s Courfeyrac?”

He looks around the room and he notices a large rust colored stain on the floor and he panics for a moment before he realizes that the blood stain is weeks, if not months, old. It’s not Courfeyrac’s blood that stains the ground. What is concerning, though, is that Gueulemer is nowhere to be found. Jehan doesn’t want to think what Gueulemer might be doing to Courfeyrac while he wastes time with Mont.

“Why do you want to see him?” Montparnasse asks.

“I need to make sure you haven’t killed my boyfriend,” he says.

“Boyfriend?” Montparnasse says. “I thought you didn’t believe in cheating.”

“I broke up with you _months_ ago,” Jehan says. “It’s hardly cheating for me to have moved on. Now I’m going to ask you again. Where’s Courfeyrac?”

“If it’ll get you to shut up,” Montparnasse says and he makes a beckoning hand gesture.

When Jehan hears a yelping sound, he turns and sees a door open behind him and Gueulemer dragging Courfeyrac in by his hair. When they’re about ten feet away, Gueulemer stops and lets Courfeyrac fall to the ground with a heavy groan. Courfeyrac looks awful—bruised and bloodied and it looks like the brace around his knee might be broken—and Jehan moves towards him, but Montparnasse catches him by the arm and jerks him back. His grip is hard enough to bruise.

“Not so fast,” he says.

“Let him go,” Jehan says, not taking his eyes off Courfeyrac.

Courfeyrac groans again at the sound of Jehan’s voice, as though protesting his presence. Jehan has to fight the overwhelming urge to rush to him and gather him in his arms and assure him that everything will be okay.

“That depends on you,” Montparnasse says.

“What do you mean?”

“Babet, Gueulemer, wait for us downstairs,” Montparnasse says. “Make sure none of their little friends followed him here. I want to have a little chat in private.”

Gueulemer aims one last kick at Courfeyrac’s ribs before he and Babet leave.

Montparnasse lets go of Jehan’s arm, but before Jehan can rush to Courfeyrac’s side, Montparnasse has pulled out a gun and Jehan recognizes the silent command to stay put. Together Jehan and Courfeyrac technically outnumber Montparnasse, but Courfeyrac is in _no_ condition to fight—let alone _move_ —and since Montparnasse is armed, Jehan’s not willing to provoke his temper.

The police are on their way. He just has to wait.

And pray that Montparnasse doesn’t do anything rash in the meantime.

Montparnasse walks towards Courfeyrac and pulls the blindfold off from around his eyes. He grabs Courfeyrac’s hair and jerks his head up. “See?” Montparnasse says. “I told you he’d come. I know my bird well.”

Then he lets go and Courfeyrac’s head drops back to the ground. Jehan’s heart pounds in his chest and the glazed, unfocused look in Courfeyrac’s eyes worries him. He’s probably concussed. He needs medical attention.

“You need to let him go, Mont,” Jehan says. “He needs medical attention!”

“Not just yet,” Montparnasse says.

He needs to distract Mont, needs to get him to waste time. “How did you even find him?” Jehan asked. “Did you kidnap him from the health center?”

“It was easy,” Montparnasse says. “Babet and Claquesous stole his laptop more than a month ago and the idiot never thought to change his passwords. We’ve keeping track of his email, his Google calendar, his social media—and you through it—this whole time. And when I learned he’d be alone at a physical therapy appoint on _your birthday_ …well, it was too good of an opportunity to pass, wasn’t it?”       

“What do you want from me, Mont?” he asks.

“I’m leaving town tonight,” Montparnasse says. “Come with me, and I’ll let him go. Once we’re out of town, I’ll even let you call the police, bring them right to your little pretty boy here.” He presses his boot down against Courfeyrac’s cheek.

Jehan’s hands shake in their bonds. He’s not sure if it’s from fear or anger. “And if I don’t go with you?” he asks. He wants to demand that Montparnasse gets away from Courfeyrac, that he leaves him alone, but he doesn’t want to risk Mont’s temper. He just needs to keep him talking, keep him distracted.

The answering smile that Montparnasse has for him is chilling. “Then I make you watch as I shoot him dead and then I take you with me anyway,” he says, stepping in close to him. He reaches out to caress Jehan’s cheek and the touch makes Jehan want to be ill. “I always knew you’d come back to me,” he says in a low voice. “One way or another, I always said it. This is your only choice now.”

“Not much of a choice,” Jehan says.

Montparnasse’s expression grows colder. “You brought this on yourself! I gave you plenty of chances to come back on your own, but you—”

“Chances, Mont?” Jehan snaps. “Sending me threatening messages, having me and Courfeyrac mugged in the street, stalking me—and now this? Those were supposed to be _chances_? Mont, you’re out of your goddamn mind!”

“Funny,” Montparnasse says. “That’s what Sous said before he left town last night.”

“He was right! Mont, this is crazy. You’ve got to see that! You need _help_!”

“I need you.”

Jehan shakes his head. “I can’t help you with this, Mont. Even when we were together—that didn’t stop you from attacking those sex workers. I don’t know what happened, but you changed. This isn’t who you used to be. I can’t help you fix that, but if you…if you turn yourself in, they can get you the help you need.”

“Fuck that,” he says, his eyes angry. “A life behind bars never helped anyone.” He aims the gun at Courfeyrac and cocks it. “Make your choice.”

_Shit_. “M-m-mont,” he says.  “Please. You don’t have to do this.” He wonders if it’d be possible for him to move, to become a barrier between Montparnasse and Courfeyrac. “You don’t have to hurt him.”

“Give me an answer, Jehan.”

He feels breathless, frozen. Where are the fucking police? “I’ll go with you,” he says. “Just don’t hurt him. We can be together again, like we used to be. I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Courfeyrac groans again in protest and Jehan wants to hold him and quiet him and reassure him that this is just a ruse, but he can’t. He doesn’t even risk looking at Courfeyrac.

“You’re just choosing me to spare him,” Montparnasse says.

“What does it matter?” Jehan says. “In the end, I’m still choosing you. I still l-love you.” The words stick in his throat because lying about love seems worse than a normal lie.

But it does the trick and Montparnasse lowers his gun.

And then they hear shouting and gunfire from downstairs. Instantly, Montparnasse has his gun trained back on Jehan.

“You called the fucking police!?”

“Of course I called the police!” he shouts. “After everything you’ve done to me—I’m not an idiot!”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, the door busts open and police officers stream in. Montparnasse grabs Jehan and pulls him flush against his chest and presses the gun against his head. He’s a human shield.

Jehan hears a whimpering sound from Courfeyrac.

The world seems to slow down around Jehan and he doesn’t know the exact cause. He’s vaguely aware of the police commanding Mont to drop the gun and he hears Montparnasse shout something else in return, but mostly he just hears his own heart pounding against his chest and he just hears Courfeyrac whimpering behind him.

Everything is still and frozen when he hears Mont’s gun clatter on the floor and a second later there are hands pulling him away from Montparnasse and cutting the zip tie from around his wrists and Montparnasse is tackled to the ground and handcuffed.

Jehan pulls away from the hands that hold him and he rushes to Courfeyrac’s side. He’s joined a moment later by a pair of EMTs who gently roll Courfeyrac onto his back and check his vitals.

Jehan doesn’t let go of Courfeyrac’s hand.

He rides in the ambulance with Courfeyrac, but as soon as they reach the hospital, Courfeyrac is whisked away to an exam room in the ER and Jehan is left behind in the waiting room. He’s sure the police will be here soon to ask him questions, but he doesn’t want to wait alone. Now that the danger is over, he’s feeling a little more aware of himself but his hands are trembling and he feels the vague unease that always grabs him before an anxiety attack. His cell phone is still in Mont’s possession and Enjolras’s in the bushes outside the warehouse, so Jehan goes to the nurses’ station and asks to make a call.

He knows Grantaire’s number from heart.

“Hello?” Grantaire says when he answers the phone and Jehan feels a moment of guilt when he hears the worry in his friend’s voice because he knows he’s the cause.

“R,” he says. “I’m—”

“Jehan? Holy fuck, are you okay? Where are you? Where’s Courf? Is he okay? What the hell were you _thinking_?”

“I’m okay,” he says. His voice sounds small even to his own ears. “And I think Courf is going to be okay too. We’re at the hospital. Mont’s been arrested.”

Grantaire swears violently. “Are you sure you’re okay? What hospital are you at? I’ll meet you there.”

Jehan gets the address from one of the nurses and relays it to Grantaire and Grantaire promises to get to the hospital as fast as he can before he hangs up and Jehan is alone again.

The police arrive before Jehan’s friends do and Officer Parsons takes him back to an empty room to get a statement from him. She’s steady and stern, but she’s also kind and when she asks to know what happened, Jehan doesn’t hold back. He purges himself of the entire ordeal. He’s crying by the end of it, but he’s not ashamed. Parsons tells him that they might have some follow-up questions for him later, but then dismisses him back to the waiting room. Before he leaves, she even offers her best wishes for Courfeyrac’s speedy recovery.

By the time he’s done with the interview, Grantaire, Enjolras, Eponine, and Combeferre are all waiting for him in the lobby and Grantaire barely pauses to look him over before scooping him into a hug. His arms are strong and steady and Jehan feels safe even though he’s shaking and Grantaire is calling him ten different kinds of idiot.

“Everyone else is on their way,” Combeferre explains when Grantaire finally lets go. “We couldn’t fit anyone else in the car.”

Jehan nods. Enjolras and Combeferre are Courfeyrac’s best friends. He knows Courfeyrac will take comfort in knowing they were the first to arrive.

“Any idea how Courf’s doing?” Eponine asks.

“He was beaten up pretty bad,” he says. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget seeing Courfeyrac’s crumpled body on the ground. “And he was in and out of consciousness in the ambulance, but the EMT told me he suspected that was more due to the pain rather than the severity of his injuries. But I don’t know. There’s still a chance that the EMT missed something.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Enjolras says, his hand tucked against Grantaire’s. His voice is steady and reassuring.

Jehan tries to take comfort in it.

When the rest of their friends arrive, Jehan is wedged between Eponine and Grantaire, taking comfort in the proximity and Enjolras and Combeferre field everyone’s questions as best they can.

Courfeyrac’s sister, Cassandra, arrives not long after and Jehan remembers vaguely that she lives here in the city. The doctors had already called her parents and they called her to come represent the family until they arrived. She brings with her the reassurance that the doctors say he’s not in any life threatening sort of danger and Jehan wants to cry with relief. He hadn’t realized how scared he’d been that something more was wrong until he knew for certain that there wasn’t.

It’s another half hour before a nurse comes by and tells them that Courfeyrac has been settled in a room and is well enough to receive visitors, but only one at a time.

Jehan is surprised when Cassandra insists that he go see Courfeyrac first.

He shakes his head. “You’re family. I’m sure he wants to see you.”

Cassandra gives him a stubborn look that makes her look freakishly similar to her brother. “I know my baby brother,” she says. “You’re all he talks about, Jehan. If I try to go in there, he’s just going to kick me out and demand to see you. Go to him. It’s you he wants.”

Jehan doesn’t need to be told twice. He follows the nurse’s directions upstairs to a private room and he knocks gently on the door before pushing it open.

Courfeyrac lies on the bed, hooked up to tubes and beeping machines. The blood has been cleaned off his face and bruises are starting to take color. Still, he smiles when he sees Jehan and he holds out a hand to him, beckoning him closer.

“I hoped they’d have the good sense to send you in first,” he says.

“Your sister insisted on it,” Jehan says, lacing his fingers with Courfeyrac’s.

“Cass is here?”

“And your parents on their way,” he says, nodding. “Everyone else is down in the lobby. We’re all really worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” he says. “They’ve put me back on the good painkillers. I can barely feel a thing. They said most of this is just surface damage, though there is a good chance they’re going to need to operate on my knee again.”

Jehan remembers the broken brace around Courfeyrac’s knee back at the warehouse. With his free hand, he runs his fingers over Courfeyrac’s face, being careful not to put pressure on the bruises. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “Your knee was just starting to get better, too.”

“Not your fault.” Courfeyrac’s voice is stern, like he absolutely will not tolerate Jehan shouldering an ounce of blame. “How about you? How are you feeling?”

“Shaky,” he says honestly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.” He wonders if Grantaire would mind staying the night with him.

Courfeyrac squeezes his hand. “I’m told that’s a typical reaction to having someone hold a gun to your head.”

Jehan offers a wobbly smile. “Glad to know I’m so typical, then.”

“I’m glad you’re okay. I was so scared.”

“Me too,” Jehan says. “But they’ve got Mont now and he can’t hurt us.

Courfeyrac raises their joined hands to his lips and presses a kiss against Jehan’s hand. “Must be a nice birthday gift,” he says. “Having him behind bars at last.”

“The better birthday gift is having you safe,” he says.

Courfeyrac smiles up at him. “Jehan?”

“Hmmm?”

“For your next birthday, can we forego the hostage situation and just have a quiet night in? I don’t know how many more birthdays like this I can take.”

Jehan laughs. “Anything you want, as long as you promise to be there.”

“Of course I’ll be there,” Courfeyrac says. “I love you.”

The words take Jehan by surprise, but not in an unsettling way. He tightens his grip on Courfeyrac’s hand. “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Happy ending, as promised!
> 
> The final chapter will be up next Tuesday! Thank you all so SO much for your comments, kudos, and general awesomeness!


	77. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months later...

**Six Months Later**

Courfeyrac has always loved lazy evenings at The Musain, but he thinks he might love them now more than he ever has before. Because The Musain has always been a haven, a refuge. A place of light and life and laughter—and after the trauma of the last six months, Courfeyrac cherishes his time here more than ever. The last few months have been difficult and it’s only recently that he’s started to feel like he has his life back under his control.

Between the surgery he needed on his knee and the emotional aftermath of his abduction—the nightmares that came every night, the flashbacks, and the paranoia—he’d been forced to withdraw from school. There just wasn’t anyway for him to keep up with the work required for the last two months, not in the shape he was in. Luckily, the law school he’d been accepted to was willing to defer his enrollment for a semester and Courfeyrac is finishing his last semester of his undergrad now. School started up two weeks ago and it’s been exceptionally easy considering he already did the work for these classes back in January. He’s due to graduate in December with Grantaire and he already has plans to make Enjolras and Jehan throw them a graduation party.

After he dropped out of school, his parents tried to convince him to move back home for a bit while he recovered and the argument they’d had when he flat-out refused was brutal. He’d understood where his parents were coming from. It had been the second time he’d been attacked in as many months and he could have very easily been killed. They were afraid and worried and he understood the need to see him, to hold him, to make sure he was okay. After all, he had that same need in regard to Jehan, which was a large part of the reason why he refused to move home. He couldn’t bear to be that far from Jehan.

Which was a little unhealthy, he knew that, and he talked about it often in his therapy sessions. But facts were facts and the fact was that Jehan was the only person who could make him feel at ease when he still felt jittery about his abduction. Because when he closed his eyes, it wasn’t his attack or the violence against himself that he saw. It was always Montparnasse holding a gun to Jehan’s head.

The image is seared into his mind.

But as ill at ease as he had been, life had started to move on without him and he wasn’t about to be left behind.

In April, Eponine had the final hearing for custody of her siblings—which went perfectly and smoothly. Courfeyrac had watched Eponine walk out of the courtroom with the _biggest_ smile on her face because she finally had complete custody of her siblings. As far as Courfeyrac knows, Eponine has cut off all communication with her parents and she seems much happier for it. Of course, having custody of one and a half teenagers (Courfeyrac refuses to qualify Gavroche as one whole teenager until his thirteenth birthday next month—a fact which annoys Gavroche to no end) is hard work, but all of their friends have stepped up to help when they can. There are always volunteers to watch her siblings or shuttle them places when Eponine would otherwise need to be in two places at once.

A month later, Grantaire moved out of the apartment he shared with Eponine, giving the Thernardier siblings some much needed space, and into an apartment with Jehan. It’s a modest two bedroom place mid-way between Courfeyrac’s apartment and Enjolras and Combeferre’s apartment. Jehan absolutely _loves_ the place, even if the faucet is perpetually leaky and the neighbors are prone to having very loud and vigorous sex at all hours of the day. Jehan says it gives the place character and he doesn’t allow anyone to complain about it. Courfeyrac threw his boyfriend and Grantaire a housewarming party during the second week in May. Every last one of their friends brought Jehan a potted plant to decorate the apartment with and Grantaire swore that they’d all be dead within the week with him around. Their apartment resembles a very green forest these days, but every single one of those potted plants is still alive.

Jehan and Grantaire moving into together turned out to be very fortuitously timed, because less than a week later, Feuilly’s roommates got him kicked out of his apartment and Feuilly was able to move into Bahorel’s spare room, which Jehan had only just vacated.

Things in June didn’t run so smooth, which Jehan said he expected but Courfeyrac rather felt that after the miserable year they’d had, they all deserved some smooth sailing. The beginning of June was the anniversary of Grantaire’s mother’s death, and apparently this was the first year that Grantaire ever faced that anniversary sober.

He didn’t take it well.

Courfeyrac had kept Jehan and Enjolras company in the ER waiting room while Grantaire had his stomach pumped and the fresh cuts on his arms tended to. Enjolras had fluctuated between being hysterically worried and terribly angry, but Jehan had just been quiet. Jehan said that hadn’t been the first time he’d seen his best friend nearly drink himself to death and when Courfeyrac asked him if he was okay, Jehan simply said he was saving his anger for when Grantaire would be feeling well enough to deal with it.

Enjolras hadn’t put any time restriction on his anger and he was practically shouting at Grantaire as soon as they’d been let in to see him. Courfeyrac would have been horrified except that in the middle of Enjolras’s rant, Enjolras confessed his love for Grantaire. Loudly. Courfeyrac was pretty certain that everyone in the hospital heard Enjolras. Grantaire certainly did—and considering Grantaire had expected Enjolras to break up with him for relapsing like that, the sudden confession of love reduced him to sobs, which quickly shut Enjolras up as he tried to figure out what to do with a crying boyfriend.

In July, Courfeyrac and Jehan had both been called in to testify against Montparnasse, Babet, and Gueulemer. Claquesous managed to flee the city without getting caught. Courfeyrac expected the trial to hit him hard. It was the first time he’d have to face Montparnasse since the disaster on Jehan’s birthday back in March, and he was surprised at how calm he felt. Despite the fact that he still had nightmares about it, he’d been able to recount his side of the story in court with confidence.

Jehan didn’t handle the trial so well, not that Courfeyrac had blamed him. The defense attorney kept trying to get Jehan to trip up and accidentally implicate himself in the attacks on the sex workers because he’d still been dating and living with Montparnasse when the attacks started. Jehan, of course, hadn’t been remotely involved with those attacks and had been victimized by Montparnasse during that whole mess, but being made to talk about in a less-than-friendly setting was hard for Jehan. He was emotional—the wounds Montparnasse had inflicted on Jehan, which he only ever talked about through his poetry, were still too fresh—and the defense attorney was aggressive. She didn’t back off when Jehan was clearly getting too emotional and at one point she even triggered an anxiety attack, which left Jehan gasping for air for nearly a half hour before he was feeling steady enough to take the stand again.

Once they were no longer needed for the trial, Courfeyrac decided that they both needed a break away from, well, _everything_ , and he invited Jehan to stay with him at his parents’ home for a week. Jehan had agreed in an instant and his parents were more than happy to host them, as Courfeyrac had known they would be. By the end of the week, Courfeyrac was pretty sure his mom and his boyfriend were best friends. While Courfeyrac had been content to just bum around the house and eat all his parents’ food, Jehan had loved sitting down with Courfeyrac’s mother and having endless conversations about poetry and art and knitting. (Courfeyrac’s mom had always loved knitting and was more than happy to show Jehan the basics. Courfeyrac now own several very lumpy hats knitted by his boyfriend and he loved every single one of them.) Jehan was a bit more reserved around Courfeyrac’s father, which didn’t surprise Courfeyrac too much considering how strained Jehan’s relationship with his own father was, but by the end of the week, Jehan had warmed up to him just fine.

His parents invited Jehan back for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Courfeyrac hoped Jehan would take them up on it. He wanted to celebrate the holidays properly with Jehan without the threats of Montparnasse or Jehan’s dad looming over them.

Courfeyrac’s birthday was in August and Jehan proved once and for all how absolutely _devious_ he could be. In the weeks building up to Courfeyrac’s birthday, Jehan had him believing that Jehan was just going to throw a quiet little celebration—“After everything that happened at my birthday,” he’d said, “I just think we should keep things simple.”—and Courfeyrac hadn’t wanted to push the subject. The night before his birthday, however, he and Jehan went back to his apartment after a date to the movies to find all of their friends—and more than a few of Courfeyrac’s close acquaintances—hiding in the apartment for a surprise party.

No one had ever successfully planned a surprise party for him—he was far too nosey—and he’d been so stunned that for the first ten minutes he hadn’t been able to do anything more than sit on his couch and laugh.

He was so thrilled by the surprise party that he didn’t even mind that during his physical therapy appointment the following Monday he wrenched his knee the wrong way and nearly undid weeks and months of excruciatingly painful work. He’d been bed-ridden for two days afterwards and had nearly gone through an entire bottle of ibuprofen trying to manage the pain. It was a rough two days, but his physical therapy was back on track and everyone said that he was on track to being completely limp-free by Halloween.

It’d been hard, but there was always a silver-lining.

In an effort to always remind himself of the good, Courfeyrac spends most of his free time at The Musain, and he’s rarely there alone. Tonight is no exception. He’s sharing a table with his friends and, allegedly, they’re all supposed to be studying, but it’s a Friday night and no one has much patience for books. Enjolras and Grantaire are at one end of the table, doing that thing where they seem to flirt and argue at the same time. Courfeyrac can only differentiate from actual arguing from the way Enjolras’s lips twitch like he’s always about to smile and the way they both lean in towards each like they’re about to kiss at any moment. (Courfeyrac has been forbidden from asking about the details of Grantaire and Enjolras’s love life, but he knows they kiss a lot and he’s pretty certain they haven’t had sex yet. He thinks Enjolras will come to him with questions before he decides to take that step and Jehan says he’s certain Grantaire will tell him if it happens. Really, though, Courfeyrac is just glad to see them both so happy.)

Combeferre sits nearby with Gavroche, coaching him through his math homework while Eponine chats with Marius and Cosette, who Courfeyrac is certain are going to announce their upcoming nuptials any day now. Azelma has gotten a part-time job as a barista at The Musain and works behind the counter. Courfeyrac always makes sure to tip her double. Feuilly, Bahorel, and Bahorel’s new girlfriend—she’s got a round face and an infectious laugh that Courfeyrac loves—are in a heated debate over the whether the Avengers or the Justice League would win in a fight and the debate is regularly punctuated with the sound of laughter. Their conversation has inspired a separate superhero discussion between Joly, Musichetta, and Bossuet about the efficacy of female superhero get-ups.

The only person absent is Jehan, but Courfeyrac knows he’s on his way. He had a test in his four o’clock class and he’d sent Courfeyrac a text after he finished the test saying he needed to stop at home before he’d head over to meet him.

When Jehan does arrive, his face is flushed and he’s panting like he ran the whole way here. Courfeyrac would be concerned, but Jehan is also grinning broadly. He loves Jehan’s smiles. He loves the way they light up his whole face.

Jehan collapses into an empty chair beside Courfeyrac and shoves a piece of paper at him.

“Read it,” he says.

Courfeyrac scans the paper. It’s a letter and it becomes obvious at once what is. He looks up at Jehan. “They accepted your poems?”

“All five of them!” Jehan says. He’s practically bouncing in his seat. He’s been writing like a man possessed all summer and sometime after the week-long stay with Courfeyrac’s parents, Jehan had started submitting them to various magazines and literary journals. He hasn’t heard back from most of the places he’s submitted to, which he assures Courfeyrac is normal even though it seems rude to him. (“It’s been a month,” he said to Jehan a few weeks ago. “Surely that’s long enough to read a couple of poems.” But Jehan shook his head and said, “The entire publishing runs slower than molasses. You just have to accept it.”)

This is his first acceptance letter.

“All five?” Courfeyrac repeats.

Jehan nods. “It’s practically unheard of. Usually they only take one or two, but the editor said he just fell in love with them. He wants to know if I have more!”

“This is _great!_ ” Courfeyrac says. “Let’s tell everyone so we can celebrate!” He bangs on the table to get everyone’s attention and lets Jehan share his good news.

Courfeyrac is pleased that all their friends make a proper uproar in celebration and Jehan blushes at all the attention and all the praise. Not an ounce of it is undeserved.

When the celebrating dies down a little, Jehan scoots his chair closer to Courfeyrac’s.

“I am _so_ proud of you,” Courfeyrac says. He knows he’s going to spend the next month bragging to everyone he knows that his boyfriend is a brilliant _published_ poet.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Jehan says.

“Sure you could have,” Courfeyrac says. “You’re brilliant. It was only a matter of time before those snooty editors figured it out.”

But Jehan shakes his head and he points to the list of poems in the letter that have been accepted for publication. “At least two of those are explicitly about you,” he says. “And the other three definitely weren’t written until after I’d met you. You’ve changed the way I look at things, Courfeyrac. You’ve brought more color into my life, and the writing shows that. I could never have written stuff like this a year ago.”

Courfeyrac can hear the sincerity in Jehan’s voice and he’ll show Jehan _exactly_ how he feels about that later, but for now, he just grins cheekily at his boyfriend. “Go on,” he says. “Please continue telling me how amazing I am.”

Jehan laughs and rolls his eyes. “You’re such a goon,” he says.

“You love me anyway,” Courfeyrac says.

“Yeah,” Jehan says, his expression softening. He leans for a kiss. “Yeah, I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, folks. Wow. We have reached the end and I think I might cry, because when I started working on this a year ago, I never imagined that it would turn into what it has and I never imagined that I'd have such fabulous readers or that I'd meet so many lovely people. It's really bittersweet to be ending this, but I've told the story I set out to tell and dragging it out any longer would result in ruining the story.
> 
> Thank you all so so so much for going on this wild ride with me, especially those of you who've been along since the beginning. Do you all realize that three days ago was the year mark of when the first chapter of this went up? A YEAR. It's incredible. And you're all incredible for sticking with me this long! Seriously. I know I say this every chapter, but the comments you've left and your kudos and your general brain waves of support have meant so much to me in this last year. I've gone through some bad times when I really just wanted to give up on a lot of things, but knowing that you were waiting for an update helped me push through a lot of that. You're all beautiful, wonderful souls and I want to hug each and every one of you (and I'm not a hugger at all, so feel flattered).
> 
> I know some of you are probably curious as to what the future holds for my writing, so here's how things stand for me right now: [I Know How to Love...](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2488820/chapters/5522570) is completely written and I'll continue posting two chapters a week on that till about mid-December (at least I think that's when the last chapter will be posted) and then I'm taking a little fanfiction break. I've got family and friends who've been bugging me to complete some of my original work and since I've neglected that original work for a year in lieu of fanfiction, I figure I owe it to them to spend some time on my original fiction. That said, I do have other ideas for other Les Mis fics, which probably won't see the light of the internet until after the new year. I've also been toying around with the idea of doing a sort prequel to Requited, but right now the ideas I have for a prequel are sort of free floating in my brain and don't yet make a coherent story, and I don't like posting WiPs until I know I can get a good story out of it. Tl;dr I'll probably be back with more fics in January or February, but I probably won't be able to post as consistently then.
> 
> In the meantime, please feel free to come say hi over on [tumblr](kingesstropolis.tumblr.com). I really do love hearing from you all. 
> 
> And, once again, thank you all so much for seeing this to the end with me. It's been a great ride and I hope you've all enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it :D <3<3<3


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